Thank you super clever and fantastically good-looking friends of PILI: since my call to social media action last week we’ve managed to create a little buzz around the film. The Facebook page is behaving like the most popular teen in school and has so far had (drum roll please): 835 likes, has reached over 2500 people, and the cover photo (what I like to call ‘Drama Tree’) had nearly 2000 likes. I’ve never posted anything on Facebook that was liked so much.
PILI’s Twitter page is a poor unpopular cousin in comparison, so if you’re roaming around Twitter do please follow and share! If you’ve not followed PILI on Twitter or Facebook, you can find the film’s pages @PiliFilm on Twitter and https://www.facebook.com/PiliFilm/
To add to these impressive viewing figures, the press teams at Axa and Queen Mary have been beavering away to help get some press coverage. I blogged about the making of PILI over at the Huffington Post http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/sophie-harman/pili-hiv-from-the-female-_b_11192502.html and also managed to get a plug for the film in an interview I did for Refinery29 http://www.refinery29.uk/2016/08/116453/prep-hiv-prevention-women (although ignore my penultimate quote, which I’m not sure makes sense out of the wider context of the conversation, but my own fault, I forgot to check the quotes with the journalist. My bad).
Given the film is not yet finished, or being shown anywhere, it’s super encouraging to get a little buzz going. Any buzz and press coverage is all help in getting attention for the film, getting it into a film festival, and then get a distribution deal to make some money for the Pwani players. With some luck, you can expect to see more articles on the film in the coming months.
The Pwani players are all okay. Some have had a rough couple of weeks. Sikijua has had Malaria and Sesilia said the harvest wasn’t as good as she hoped. She said she’ll just have to come to the UK with Leanne and I when we go back to Tanzania. I imagine one look at the cold and a Croydon waiting room and she may think differently (this is a joke blog fans from UK border agencies, Sesilia is happy in Pwani with her son, yeesh the political climate of the UK that I include this bracket). Sikijua is on the mend and Bello thinks she has found the school she wants to go to. Not long now and they will be able to see the finished film.
Not Another AIDS Film 