AIDS: The Unheard Tapes

Kong Studio collaborates with The Open University on a series of animated shorts reflecting on people’s personal experiences of living with HIV over the last 30 years. The Love, Sex and HIV films were commissioned by The Open University Broadcast and Partnerships team as a companion piece to the BBC and OU documentary, ‘AIDS: The Unheard Tapes’. This project focuses on recorded interviews discussing personal experiences of living with HIV when the Aids crisis was at its peak.

The Tapes were provided by Peter Keogh, Professor of Health and Society at the Faculty of Well-being, Education and Language Studie who wanted to explore the experiences of people living with HIV once treatments had become more widely available, to highlight how people with HIV could negotiate their romantic and sexual relationships and manage to live otherwise ordinary lives. For the animated shorts, Professor Keogh dug into this archive of interviews conducted over the last 30 years and selected four contributors. Each interview was a different example of living with HIV. An attempt to challenge the dominant narrative that sex always leads to infection or that long-term relationships and children were out of the question for people with HIV. Transcripts were taken, names changed, and accounts were voiced by an actor.

Fonic provided full post production audio.

‘AIDS: The Unheard Tapes’ animated shorts are available to watch on The Open University’s Broadcast and Partnership page here.