PASADENA, Calif. — Imagine — a movie about HIV that doesn't focus on gay men!
"Life Support" (Saturday, 9 p.m., HBO) is loosely based on one black woman's story, but by it is by no means an anomaly. Nationally, 30 percent of the new cases occur in women; in Utah it's 17 percent. Nationally, 54 percent of new cases occur among blacks; 64 percent of new infections among women are blacks.
"It's been straight women, black women, minority women, Hispanic women, getting the virus. They're the new group that's getting it in the big numbers," said writer/director Nelson George, whose sister, Andrea Williams, inspired the telefilm's central character, Ana (Queen Latifah).
"It's no longer a gay disease in this country. It's a straight women's disease. It's a minority women's disease," George said. "And because of that, it's invisible."
Latifah added, "We looked at it as a gay man's disease, and we let everybody else catch it because ... we were prejudiced as a country against gay people, and we are to this day. So because of that, now everybody is susceptible to it."
The real-life counterpart to her character is just one of "a lot of married women who never had sex with anybody else but their husbands," said Williams, who, along with her HIV-positive husband, was an intravenous drug-user.
It's a personal issue for Latifah. "I lost relatives to AIDS. A couple of my closest cousins, favorite cousins," one through a transfusion, one through intravenous drug use. "I lost friends to AIDS, high school friends who never even made it to their 21st birthdays in the '80s."
But "Life Support" isn't all about death, it's about life — living with HIV.
"It's a part of my life every day," Williams said. "Just like you go to work every day, you get up in the morning, I do the same thing. Only difference is I take my pills."
The meandering, slice-of-life story focuses on Ana, who channels her energy into working for Life Support, an AIDS outreach group. She's so focused, she's neglecting her family and her own health.
"What drew me to this film was not just the HIV/AIDS aspects of it, but the relationship aspects of it," Latifah said. "We're talking about people, human beings. We're talking about people that have their feelings hurt. People trying to learn how to forgive, people who can't let go of that pain and refuse to forgive, and at what time will you forgive and when do you let someone off the hook?
"Do people deserve second chances? There's so many different things that weave themselves through this film that I don't want us to just get caught up in HIV/AIDS."
We see how HIV affects other women and their families, straight men and gay men. As a movie, "Life Support" is sometimes unfocused as it wanders through a disjointed narrative. But it has moments when the power of the story is overwhelming.
"That's why the film exists," George said. "It's a forum to speak about this. I don't want to say it's a giant (public-service announcement). But on one level, it's a wake-up call both to America (and) the black community in particular."
E-mail: pierce@desnews.com