In this poignant, riveting documentary, we follow 7-year-old Travis and his family, friends, and medical caregivers as they grapple with the boy's full-blown AIDS. In the Highbridge community of South Bronx, where almost 10% of the 50,000 HIV-infected persons are children or teens, Travis's team offers love and support, monitoring his progress and encouraging him through endless, rigid schedules of medical treatments. We, too, immediately come to admire and root for Travis, who endures all sorts of afflictions and setbacks, from having kids try to pull out the feeding tube in his stomach to realizing that, once again, his disease has outsmarted the drugs assigned to combat it. We also come to know Travis's grandmother, Geneva Jefferies who, faced with incredible hardships (the woman has 11 children, 33 grandchildren, 7 great-grandchildren, 3 pets, and high blood pressure), tirelessly cares for Travis, overseeing each of the 275 drugs he's tried (that's $12,000 Medicaid per year, folks) while grappling with the knowledge that AIDS is now the leading cause of children's deaths in New York City. Filmed over a three-year period by Richard Kohut, this well-done chronicle of daily life-with-AIDS is heartbreaking on too many levels to count and is highly recommended. Aud: H, C, P. (K. Glaser)
Travis
(1998) 56 min. $225. First Run/Icarus Films. PPR. Color cover. Vol. 14, Issue 4
Travis
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