Worth: $18.00
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Cast:
Shaun Dunne, Eva-Jane Gaffney, Jade Jordan, Robbie Lawler, Lady Veda, Lauren Larkin
Intro:
… made with deep compassion and understanding. Hypnotic and artistic, with a soundtrack that adds a subtle drama to the true stories …
This poetic and affecting documentary from Ireland takes an almost experimental approach to the genre. It’s about secrets and the burden of carrying them – in this case, the weight of silence around living with HIV. It’s also about personal narratives – how to tell your own story, despite any undeserved stigma and sense of shame someone may feel. Storytelling, the film explains, is making meaning for yourself. It’s empowering.
The origins of How to Tell a Secret are in the stage show ‘Rapids’ – the work of the film’s co-director Shaun Dunne. Instead of a straightforward adaptation for the screen, the stage aspect becomes a stylistic influence, with sections performed to an empty theatre.
Actors are used in most cases to tell the stories of people living with HIV who wish to remain anonymous. Stage and screen actor Eva-Jane Gaffney is particularly effective as she breaks the fourth wall and speaks for those who cannot tell their own stories privately, let alone publicly. Gender is irrelevant, with women telling the stories of both men and women. The migrant experience of living with HIV is also a thread in this emotional tapestry. The film has an undercurrent of fear – the fear of telling a partner or former partner, of telling family, of coming out.
Ireland can be a tiny community, especially for those who live outside Dublin. For many people living with HIV, the very act of finding support can out them as having the virus before they are ready to reveal their status to anyone. The documentary tackles the small-town mentality that has kept people hiding their status for fear of ostracization; it also highlights that HIV seems to be something that people think of as a 20th Century disease that happens somewhere else. A surprising number of the people living with HIV are quite young. Education stalled somewhere, and before education were the “fear campaigns” of the ‘80s and ‘90s.
For GenX drag icon Lady Veda, the message was always AIDS=DEATH. Veda talks about their experience with HIV and in a tribute to queer trailblazer and performance artist, Thom McGinty (The Diceman) who died of an AIDs related illness in 1995, recreates not only one of his most iconic looks, but also his ground-breaking appearance on Irish television talking about HIV.
The filmmaker, Shaun Dunne appears as himself, leading workshops with the actors. He also appears as Aaron, a particularly resonant narrative that takes an interesting turn in the film’s closing moments. Robbie Lawler, who runs podcast Pozcast with Lady Veda, also appears as himself, saying that it’s not so much an epidemic of HIV in Ireland that’s the issue, but an “epidemic of silence”. Ireland, he says, has one of the highest rates of HIV in Europe, blaming a lack of education. The lack of education also means that people still treat HIV as a death sentence with many people unaware of the variety of effective drugs available. With contemporary treatment, someone with HIV can not only have the virus become undetectable in their system but render it untransmissible. The U=U message is vital to the overall message of the documentary.
The experimental approach works – How to Tell a Secret picked up the Best Documentary Film award at the 2022 Irish Film Festival London. It’s a film that’s made with deep compassion and understanding. Hypnotic and artistic, with a soundtrack that adds a subtle drama to the true stories, you would need a heart of stone not to be moved by these secrets.
