Undetectable: The New Face of AIDS

In 1995, medical researchers released the “AIDS cocktail,” a powerful new drug combination that included protease inhibitors found to lower viral counts to virtually undetectable levels in four out of five patients. But the incessant regimen of pill-popping--as many as 30 per day--combined with complicated and dangerous side effects soon took its own toll: on average, patients stuck with the grueling treatment for only eleven months before it either proved ineffective or intolerable. Filmmaker Jay Corcoran's Undetectable: The New Face of AIDS takes an unflinching look at the lives of six culturally and ethnically diverse men and women with advanced HIV or AIDS-related illnesses as they undergo the cocktail treatment from 1997-1999. Included are the personal trials of a middle-aged man who nearly died until multi-drug therapy came along; a woman who contracted the disease from her husband; and a recovering drug user trying to raise her children, one of whom is also HIV-positive. Complications from other life struggles and diseases make the stories particularly wrenching, while the patients' varying degrees of difficulty in coping with the treatment remind us of the larger struggle to maintain hope in lives inalterably changed by the AIDS epidemic. Combining candid interviews with the patients and real-time visits to their doctors, Undetectable bears witness to the changing face of AIDS. Recommended. Aud: C, P. (A. Cantú)