Fig Trees

Fig Trees (2009)

FIG TREES is a documentary opera about AIDS activists Tim McCaskell of Toronto and Zackie Achmat of Capetown as they fight for access to treatment drugs. Documentary interviews, speeches, press conferences and demonstrations are sampled, taken apart, and set to music, replayed this time as operatic scenes. A surreal fictional narrative is intercut with the stories of their struggles against government and the pharmaceutical industry. In this fictional world, Gertrude Stein decides to write a tragic opera about Tim and Zackie and their saint-like heroism. She kidnaps them, transports them to Niagara Falls, and forces them to sing a series of complicated avant-garde vocal compositions. However, when Zackie ends his treatment strike and starts taking his pills, Gertrude realizes that there will be no more tragedy, and thus, no more opera.

Date of release
2009-02-09
TMDB
5.0 / 10 (2)
Runtime
1h 40m
Genres
Documentary, Music
Director
John Greyson

Casting

Interesting facts

Fig Trees is a 2009 Canadian operatic documentary film written and directed by John Greyson. It follows South African AIDS activist Zackie Achmat and Canadian AIDS activist Tim McCaskell as they fight for access to treatment for HIV/AIDS. It was also inspired by Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson's opera Four Saints in Three Acts. The film premiered at the 59th Berlin International Film Festival where it won the Teddy Award for Best Documentary.

Background

Zackie Achmat is a South African HIV-positive activist who founded the Treatment Action Campaign in 1998. The organization focuses on access to drug treatment for HIV/AIDS patients who cannot afford private health care. Achmat refused to take medication himself until the South African government made antiretroviral treatments available through public sector hospitals.

Director John Greyson has been involved in AIDS activism since the 1980s. In 2001, he and musician David Wall had the idea to write an opera about Achmat's treatment strike after a piece on him appeared in The New York Times. The work originally took the form of an eight-part video installation. It was inspired by the 1920s opera Four Saints in Three Acts by Virgil Thomson and Gertrude Stein.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

Recommended