Little Secret

Little Secret

Price: $99.00 educational rate (includes teachers’ guide).
Running time : 37 minutes (DVD)

Synopsis

Ten kids, aged 13-19, all strangers except for two sisters, share nothing in common except their “little secret” and 100 miles of challenging white water rapids ahead. The secret, learned through painful experience to jealously guard, is that each and every one of them are HIV-positive. Josh is a hemopheliac, Alora’s mother had cancer and got blood transfusions while she was pregnant, Angela was raped, Willie has no idea how he got it, Stephanie’s boyfriend got it from tatoo needles and passed it to her, and so the stories go. Gifted with this trip by a non-profit, the teenagers tell their stories in this poignant coming of age story, filmed in cinema verite on the Middle Fork of the Salmon River, twisting and turning, rising and falling with the river and the emotions. Narrated by Anthony Hopkins, this film is accredited by California Healthy Kids Resource Center to be used in middle and high school health education classes. A teachers’ guide is included.

“Little Secret” Producer’s Notes

This film was made while I was Associate Producer at Tell The Truth Pictures (now defunct). I spent almost a year trying to find teenagers who wanted an all-expenses paid, week-long, whitewater rafting trip in the wilderness of Idaho. We supplied everything right down to every piece of clothing and camping gear. Every kid’s dream. But it meant that they had to be willing to be “out” about being HIV-positive, since we were filming. So up until 2 weeks before the trip was scheduled to go, I’d only found six kids willing to join the adventure. We grabbed the last four in the final few days. They were all as different as could be: Native American, Haitian, Irish, Jewish, tall, short, fat, thin, live parents, dead parents, a supportive home and near homeless. They fell into friendships immediately, had teenage crushes on one another, laughed and cried and finally were able to be completely honest and forthcoming about the disease that compromised their life and dreams. I was kind of the “house mother” and it was the most amazing river-rafting trip of my life.

Our price: $99.00