Frontline
The Old Man and the Storm
A year in the life of one extended family in New Orleans struggling to rebuild after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
Wilhemina's War
A Southern grandmother struggles to help her granddaughter survive the health risks and social stigma of living with HIV in South Carolina.
- Series
- Independent Lens
- Premiere Date
- February 29, 2016
- Length
- 60 minutes
- Funding Initiative
- Diversity Development Fund
Director
June Cross
June Cross has won two national Emmys and two duPont-Columbia Journalism Awards. Her previous work includes Wilhemina’s War, which follows a Southern grandmother who struggles to help her granddaughter survive the health risks and social stigma of living with HIV in South Carolina. Her film The Old Man and the Storm followed the travails of an extended… Show more
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The Film
AIDS is one of the leading causes of death for black women in the rural South, where living with HIV is a grim reality. Wilhemina Dixon, her daughter Toni, granddaughter Dayshal, and her 92-year-old mother, all the descendants of sharecroppers, live in South Carolina. Wilhemina cares for Dayshal, 19, who was born with HIV. We first meet Dayshal at 14, as a high school freshman, when she’s reticent to discuss her disease and the side effects of her medications make her sick. She spends most of her days in bed. Her mother, a drug addict, dies of AIDS, but Dayshal is uncertain whether she will avoid her mother’s fate.
Fighting the grim reality that awaits those living with HIV in a state hostile to public health care are advocates like Vivian Clark-Armstead of the South Carolina HIV/AIDS Council, the only organization in the state that runs prevention and education efforts. Wilhemina’s War explores Southern black women’s experience, where sexual networks are smaller, rumors spread fast, and church-imposed stigma drives the sick underground.
