Tackling HIV stigma through horror film

Anyone familiar with Casey House likely already knows that this Toronto institution has a lot of initiatives that fall outside of conventional ideas about what hospitals do.

Founded in 1988 by a group of community activists, journalists and volunteers who were “appalled” at the societal indifference to the AIDS epidemic, Casey House was Canada’s first stand-alone facility for people living with HIV and AIDS. Since then, it has expanded to become a hospital that provides care for people living with and at risk of HIV. This is very much in keeping with the vision of its founders, including the renowned author/activist June Callwood, who believed that everyone deserves to be cared for with dignity, compassion and respect.

This year, though, when Casey House released “Others,” a short horror film about the stigma associated with HIV, the dynamic institution really outdid itself.

Some readers might not be aware that stigma around HIV is still a problem. Didn’t we learn to be better humans 30-something years ago? Not so much, it turns out.

“I think one of the strongest indicators is that 80 per cent of folks with a diagnosis of HIV indicate that they would be anxious about disclosing their status as a result of the stigma,” said Joanne Simons, chief executive officer of Casey House. “That’s the vast majority of people with HIV, which is a little bit shocking.”

Stigma can affect their clients’ personal lives, employment and access to healthcare. One Casey House client related the difficulties involved in finding a dentist — something many of us might take for granted.

“She tried 10 dentists before she found one that would take her on as a patient because of their fear of contraction of HIV,” recalls Simons. “So, there’s still a lack of knowledge and education running through our communities that prevents the thriving of people living with HIV.”

Given this, tackling stigma is very much a part of providing care for Casey House clients, which is why, in partnership with Bensimon Byrne, it’s produced a 20-minute film to help raise awareness of its #smashstigma campaign. And it was key to the project that it also increased the representation of people living with HIV on-screen.

“We were committed to having the lead actor be somebody living with HIV,” said Simons. “The reason this movie needed to be made was so that we can start to represent people living with HIV who are living well.”

Stigma associated with HIV, however, would wind up making casting the lead role difficult. It took months and, at times, the creators wondered if it would ever get made.

“Apparently the feedback from agents and managers was that nobody wanted to come forward for the role, because people were scared that it will effect their career,” explained U.K.-based actor Peter McPherson who plays the film’s main character, aptly named “Peter.”

“I’ve always been open about my status, so my agent asked me to have a look and see what I thought,” he recalled. “And then I read the script and I was blown away by it.”

When he did more research into Casey House, McPherson knew he wanted to be a part of the project.

“I did the audition and then I added a little clip to my tape, which is something I would never normally do,” he said. “But I just felt compelled to say that ‘no matter what happens with casting, thank you for doing this and thank you for searching for someone with HIV.’”

One of the things that was so compelling about the script, for both McPherson and director Paul Shkordoff, was that it was a horror film. And if that seems like an odd genre to choose to address stigma, consider that the entire Gothic horror genre is generally thought to have kicked off with Horace Walpole’s “The Castle of Otranto” (1764), a book about a tyrannical ruler in a castle. Walpole, an English member of Parliament, was, at the time, worried that the Tories were working to establish an “absolute monarchy.”

More recent examples of horror films with political messages include the films “Get Out,” “Vampires Versus the Bronx” and the Amazon Prime series, “Them,” — a serial about white mob violence and segregation.

“It can be something like a Trojan horse for social commentary,” explained Toronto filmmaker Shkordoff.

“It makes it possible to couch certain ideas in a more subversive way, like the way ‘Others’ sets the audience up to have an ‘aha’ moment when they realize it’s about HIV and stigma.”

Which, of course, Casey House has been trying to raise awareness about for several years with provocative programming, such as the HIV+ Eatery, a 2017 pop-up run by HIV positive chefs to help “debunk the myth that HIV can be transmitted through food.” That experience was turned into a short documentary to amplify the message.

“I think seeing folks living with HIV portrayed in the news, in media and in film helps the whole community come together to stand against stigma,” said Casey House’s Simons. “And that way we can show that shame and blame have no place in this disease.”