Himself
Producción de Reino Unido e India que profundiza en el negocio de los medicamentos para combatir el sida. Las patentes de los medicamentos son desde hace décadas el negocio más rentable del planeta. A partir de 1996 los nuevos tratamientos antirretrovirales contra el sida evitaron un 80% de muertes en los países occidentales. Sin embargo, más de diez millones de personas murieron en los países pobres a causa del SIDA, debido al monopolio creado por la industria farmacéutica y los gobiernos occidentales que les negaron el acceso a unos medicamentos genéricos y asequibles.
Christopher Moraka
FIG TREES is a documentary opera about AIDS activists Tim McCaskell of Toronto and Zackie Achmat of Capetown as they fight for access to treatment drugs. Documentary interviews, speeches, press conferences and demonstrations are sampled, taken apart, and set to music, replayed this time as operatic scenes. A surreal fictional narrative is intercut with the stories of their struggles against government and the pharmaceutical industry. In this fictional world, Gertrude Stein decides to write a tragic opera about Tim and Zackie and their saint-like heroism. She kidnaps them, transports them to Niagara Falls, and forces them to sing a series of complicated avant-garde vocal compositions. However, when Zackie ends his treatment strike and starts taking his pills, Gertrude realizes that there will be no more tragedy, and thus, no more opera.
