如何說出秘密：新電影探索現代愛爾蘭的 HIV 披露

這部電影由肖恩·鄧恩和安娜·羅傑斯共同執導，透過真實故事探討了在愛爾蘭披露您的愛滋病毒感染狀況的現實情況。

資料來源：2022 年 11 月 26 日/ The Journal / 財團法人台灣紅絲帶基金會編譯

 

你如何講故事？

 

故事如何在人與人之間傳播？你如何講述一個你被教導要保守秘密的故事？

從 12 月 1 日起在選定的電影院上映的愛爾蘭紀錄片《如何說出秘密》是對愛爾蘭愛滋病毒感染者以及人們披露愛滋病病毒的多種方式的感人實驗性寫照。

這部電影由肖恩·鄧恩和安娜·羅傑斯聯合執導，茲拉塔·菲利波維奇製作，探討了人們探索如何披露自己的愛滋病毒感染狀況以及講故事本身的本質的各種經歷。 這部紀錄片於今年早些時候在 Virgin Media 都柏林國際電影節上首映，最近在倫敦愛爾蘭電影節上獲得了最佳紀錄片獎。

它藉鑑了鄧恩 (Dunne) 於 2017 年首演並隨後在愛爾蘭各地巡迴演出的名為《激流》的戲劇，將戲劇和電影融合成一種獨特的銀幕體驗，其創作者將其描述為一部混合電影。

幾年前，當紀錄片導演安娜·羅傑斯 (Anna Rodgers) 坐在觀眾席觀看急流 (Rapids) 的表演時，她被「震撼」了。

「這真的影響了我的情緒」，羅傑斯在接受《華爾街日報》採訪時說。

之後，她安排了與肖恩·鄧恩的會面，商討將該劇改編成電影的事宜。

「當時，劇院也開始向線上轉移，所以我們想避免在銀幕上製作一部劇院。 我們想拍一部電影」，羅傑斯說。

我們談到製作一部混合電影，介於紀錄片和更抽象的證詞重建之間，這些證詞是為急流收集的，然後是我們為如何說出秘密收集的新證詞。

「我們知道我們正在處理並非所有人都能公開談論的事情。 有一些人，電影中非常重要的角色，可以說話，講述自己的故事和自我表現，但也有很多人覺得他們還沒有準備好這樣做」。

「我們知道我們必須為這部電影找到一種語言，我們必須找到一種有點不同的方式來做到這一點」。

鄧恩也出現在影片中，與愛滋病活動家羅比勞勒以及演員傑德· 丹，勞倫·拉金和伊娃-簡·加夫尼一起出現在銀幕上，他們講述了愛滋病毒感染者的故事。

「對我來說，這個故事真的是從整體上著眼於披露，即告訴別人你的愛滋病毒的行為，但與此同時，我們作為電影製作人和藝術家，正在問我們如何才能表現這些經歷」，鄧恩說。

「有些人希望公開感染愛滋病毒，然後有一群人希望為這些證詞提供服務。 就我們如何駕馭每個場景而言，這成為核心貫穿始終」。

 

《如何說秘密》中的喬丹

 

對於大多數紀錄片來說，講故事都是尖銳的聲音，使用一系列技術，如畫外音、口型同步和重複，以掩蓋誰在講故事以及故事屬於誰。

在其他時候，它會安靜下來並使用引人注目的視覺效果或身體動作來進行交談。

「你會看到像我們這樣的工作材料，把東西拍成電影，然後當我們瀏覽作品時，這些表現變得越來越真實，越來越真實」，鄧恩說。

我認為我們在電影中真正提升的戲劇中的一個主要概念是故事像病毒一樣在身體中傳播的想法。

「我認為 Anna 和我在以電影方式表現這一點以及與我們的剪輯師合作時獲得了很多樂趣，玩弄了只有在電影中才能很好地實現的設備，比如貫穿影片的口型同步主題」。

羅傑斯同意：「圍繞病毒在身體或故事中傳播的事情之一是，我們想發揮這種表現的想法，人們實際上是在為他們持有或承載人們的故事」。

「多年來，紀錄片中出現了很多比喻，尤其是與 LGBT 相關的故事，在那裡你看到陰影中的人，或者我們看到人們的手而不是他們的臉等等」，她解釋道。

「有時我們玩弄那種語言，展示人們嘴巴的特寫鏡頭，但後來我們確實揭示了它們」。

當我去看這部戲時發生的一件事是我不太確定劇中誰是真實的誰不是真實的，誰在講述他們自己的故事誰不是。

「這真的激起了我質疑我自己對 HIV 的假設，也許還有我們所有人都帶有的偏見，你對它的某些看法是因為你可能從多年吸收 HIV 故事和 AIDS 故事的方式中繼承了這一點。 在媒體上有代表。 我認為將其帶入電影中會非常有趣」。

 

《如何說出秘密》中的愛滋病活動家羅比·勞勒 (Robbie Lawlor)

關於 HIV 和愛滋病的偏見或誤解仍然普遍存在，尤其是在哪些人可能感染 HIV 及其傳播方式方面。

無論性取向如何，任何人都可能感染該病毒——2020 年，男同性戀和雙性戀男性佔英格蘭新診斷病例的 45%，而異性戀男性和女性合計佔 50%。

透過藥物治療，可以將一個人將 HIV 傳染給其他人的風險降至零。 如果體內的 HIV 水平（即病毒載量）變得如此之低，以至於無法在血液測試中檢測到，就沒有將 HIV 傳染給伴侶的風險。

U=U（無法檢測= 不會傳播）的信息出現在影片的一個重要時刻。

這部紀錄片有興趣描繪當今愛爾蘭愛滋病毒感染者的經歷，但它也向過去的一位重要人物致敬。

湯姆·麥金蒂 (Thom McGinty) 是愛爾蘭演員，被稱為骰子人 (The Diceman)，他是 1980 年代和 90 年代初期都柏林標誌性的街頭藝人，但於 1995 年因愛滋病併發症去世。

羅傑斯說：「在劇中，肖恩有幾句台詞，人們讓他提到並尊重骰子人，這在我看來非常突出」。

「我真的記得骰子人，因為我在城裡上學，所以在我成長的過程中我會看到他很多次，然後突然間，他就不見了」，她說。

「當我們開始談論這部電影時，我們知道我們想讓它成為一個真正的當代故事，並以此時此地為基礎，即今天感染愛滋病毒的經歷，這與過去非常非常不同，但我們做到了想要承認和尊重愛滋病危機的歷史以及這裡發生的事情」。

電影製作人邀請了 HIV 倡導者和變裝皇后 Veda 或 Enda McGrattan 參與這部電影——「我們知道他們在口型同步方面很了不起，因為他們是變裝皇后，他們在 George 中一直這樣做 ！ – 後來發現 The Diceman 的遺產對 Veda 的藝術產生了重要影響。

「我們沒有意識到的是，從 Veda 十幾歲進城時起，Veda 就與 Thom McGinty 有著如此深厚的精神聯繫」，Dunne 說。

他說：「這是思想和經驗的真正融合，這讓我們覺得整件事都充滿了激情」。

「我認為，從 Veda 的角度和我們作為電影製作人的角度向某人致敬是一種真正的榮幸，但從 Veda 在格拉夫頓街的街道上觀看 Thom 以及他們的變裝美學受到 Thom’s 的啟發 – 它代表了這種關係 這非常、非常、非常特別」。

他解釋說它「在主題上與我們在電影中所做的整體一致，因為我們的電影就是關於那個的」。

「這一切都是關於影響力和人與人之間的事物——無論是故事、能量還是靈感」。

從 12 月 1 日（世界愛滋病日）起，《如何說出秘密》將在全國選定的電影院上映。 有關更多信息和購買門票，請參見此處。

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How To Tell A Secret: New film explores HIV disclosure in modern Ireland

Co-directed by Shaun Dunne and Anna Rodgers, the film looks at the reality of disclosing your HIV status in Ireland, using real-life stories.

Nov 26th 2022, 7:00 PM /  The Journal

 

HOW DO YOU tell a story?

How do stories move between people?

How do you tell a story you’ve been taught to keep a secret?

The Irish documentary How To Tell A Secret, which is in selected cinemas from 1 December, is a moving and experimental portrayal of living with HIV in Ireland and the many ways that people approach HIV disclosure.

Co-directed by Shaun Dunne and Anna Rodgers, and produced by Zlata Filipovic, the film explores the varied experiences of people navigating how to disclose their HIV status and the nature of storytelling itself. The documentary, which premiered at the Virgin Media Dublin International Film Festival earlier this year, recently won Best Documentary Film at the Irish Film Festival London.

Drawing on a play by Dunne called Rapids that debuted in 2017 and later toured around Ireland, it merges theatre and cinema into a unique on-screen experience that its creators describe as a hybrid film.

When documentary director Anna Rodgers sat in the audience of a performance of Rapids several years ago, she was “blown away”.

“It really affected me emotionally,” Rodgers said in an interview with The Journal.

Afterwards, she arranged a meeting with Shaun Dunne to discuss translating the play into a film.

“At the time, theatre was starting to move online as well, so we wanted to avoid making a piece of theatre on screen. We wanted to make a film,” Rodgers said.

We talked about making something that was a hybrid film that moved between documentary and more abstract reconstructions of the testimony that was gathered for Rapids, and then the new testimony that we gathered for How To Tell A Secret.

“We knew that we were dealing with something that not all people could speak openly about. There were some people, really important characters in the film, that could speak and tell their own stories and self-represent, but then there were a lot of people that didn’t feel that they were ready yet to do that.

“We knew we had to find a language for the film and we had to find a way of doing it that was a bit different.”

Dunne, who also features in the film, is joined on screen by HIV activist Robbie Lawlor, as well as by actors Jade Jordan, Lauren Larkin and Eva-Jane Gaffney, who take on the stories of people living with HIV.

“For me, the story really is looking at disclosure overall, which is the act of telling someone about your HIV, but at the same time, we, as filmmakers and artists, are asking how can we represent these experiences,” Dunne said.

“There are people who were looking towards coming out about living with HIV and then there’s a community of people who are looking to serve those testimonies. That became the core through-line in terms of how we navigate each of the scenes.”

 Jade Jordan in How To Tell A Secret

For most of the documentary, the storytelling is acutely vocal, using a range of techniques like voiceover, lip sync and repetition, to obscure who is physically telling a story and who the story belongs to.

At other times, it quietens and uses striking visuals or physical movement to do the talking.

“You see things like us workshopping material, putting things on film, and then as we move through the piece, those representations become more and more realised and more actualised,” Dunne said.

One of the leading concepts from the play which I think we really elevated in the film is the idea that stories move through bodies in the same way that a virus does.

“I think Anna and I had a lot of fun in representing that cinematically and in the collaboration with our editor as well, playing with devices that you can only realise really well in cinema, like the lip sync motif that runs through the film.”

Rodgers agreed: “One of the things around the virus moving through bodies or the story bodies was that we wanted to play with that idea of representation, that people are literally holding or carrying people’s stories for them.”

“Over the years with documentaries, there’s been a lot of tropes, especially with LGBT-related stories, where you see people in shadows, or we see people’s hands and not their faces and things like that,” she explained.

“Sometimes we played with the language of that, showing close-ups of people’s mouths, but then we do reveal them.

One of the things that happened when I went to see the play was I wasn’t quite sure who in the play was real and who wasn’t and who was telling their own story and who wasn’t.

“It really provoked me to question my own assumptions about HIV and perhaps the prejudice that we all carry, that you think certain things about it because you’ve maybe inherited that from years and years of absorbing the way that HIV stories and AIDS stories were represented in the media. I thought that was something that would be really interesting to bring into the film.”

 HIV activist Robbie Lawlor in How To Tell A Secret

Prejudices or misconceptions about HIV and AIDS are still prevalent, especially in relation to who can be infected with HIV and how it spreads.

Anyone can contract the virus, regardless of sexual orientation – in 2020, gay and bisexual men accounted for 45% of new diagnoses made in England, while heterosexual men and women together accounted for 50%.

With medication, the risk of a person transmitting HIV to someone else can be brought down to zero. If the level of HIV in the body – the viral load – becomes so low that it cannot be detected in a blood test, there is no risk of passing on HIV to partners.

That message of U=U (undetectable = untransmittable) features at an important moment in the film.

The documentary is interested in portraying the experiences of people living with HIV in Ireland in the present day, but it also pays tribute to an important figure from the past.

Thom McGinty, an Irish actor known as The Diceman, was an iconic street performer in Dublin in the 1980s and early 1990s, but passed away in 1995 from complications of AIDS.

“In the play, Shaun has some lines where people had asked him to mention and honour The Diceman and that really stood out in my mind,” Rodgers said.

“I really remember the Diceman because I went to school in town so I would have seen him loads when I was growing up, and then suddenly, he was gone,” she said.

“When we started talking about the film, we knew that we wanted to make it a really contemporary story and base it on the here and now, the experience of having HIV today, which is very, very different to the past, but we did want to acknowledge and honour the history of the AIDS crisis and what happened here.”

The filmmakers had invited HIV advocate and drag queen Veda, or Enda McGrattan, to take part in the film – “we knew that they were amazing at lip syncing, because they’re a drag queen, they do that all the time in the George!” – and later found that The Diceman’s legacy had an important influence on Veda’s art.

“What we didn’t realise was Veda had this kind of deep spiritual connection to Tom McGinty from when Veda was a teenager and going into town,” Dunne said.

“It was a real merging of thought and experience, which made the whole thing feel very charged for us,” he said.

“It’s a real honour, I think, to pay tribute to somebody, from Veda’s perspective, and from ours as filmmakers, but from Veda having watched Thom on the streets of Grafton Street and their drag aesthetic being inspired by Thom’s – it represents that relationship that’s very, very, very special.”

He explained that it “thematically corresponds to what we’re doing overall in the film, because our film is all about that”.

“It’s all about influence and things moving between people – whether it’s a story, or an energy, or inspiration.”

How To Tell A Secret will be available to watch at selected cinemas across the country from 1 December (World Aids Day). For more information and to buy tickets, see here.

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