Small snapshot sheds light on Africa's AIDS crisis

The documentary focuses on Swaziland, a tiny portion of Africa's AIDS epidemic. (DOCUMENTARY EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES)

In "Today the Hawk Takes One Chick," Cambridge-based filmmaker Jane Gillooly focuses a still, clear lens on a tiny corner of Africa's AIDS crisis and in so doing illuminates the whole. The documentary is heartbreaking but in none of the obvious ways; rather than disease per se, the subject is the vast and wrenching social consequences of epidemic.

Staking out a 15-mile area within the Lubombo region of Swaziland, the tiny independent kingdom between South Africa and Mozambique, "Hawk" depicts a handful of "gogos," or grandmothers, who've picked up the slack of their society's near-total breakdown.

Maria Shongwe is a typical example: Seven of her nine grown children have died from complications of HIV, and one more is near death. In their absence, she's the sole caretaker for her 10 grandchildren. The film implies this is the norm across the continent: an entire generation vanished, with the surrounding generations left to pick up the pieces. Swaziland, and by extension Africa, is a ghost land.

Gillooly traverses this lunar landscape with a calm camera and a willingness to let images speak for themselves. There's no narration or soundtrack music; none are needed. Women like Maria, Albertina Skhosana, and a heroic nurse named Thandiwe Mathunjwa are seen fighting a daily battle to keep children fed and disease checked as best as possible.

Few illusions are left. After two decades of epidemic, everyone knows how the disease is spread, and the older women are the first to lecture their wards on the dangers of sexual promiscuity and the need for condoms. Their warnings fall on partially deaf ears: One of Maria's older granddaughters has just had her second baby (the father's nowhere to be seen) and chalks up her own mother's death to "evil spirits." The recklessness of youth continues to have lethal consequences.

"Hawk" takes place largely in the rural homesteads, one of the film's points being that the inhabitants of urban areas have returned to their ancestral lands to die as AIDS has burned through the population. You notice the eerie absence of grown men, the absence of people. During a visit to a children's hostel, we learn that 85 percent of the kids have lost both parents.

The film balances despair and a gutted sense of hope. Constant blood tests and an educated populace are clearly understood to be the only ways to combat the spread of ignorance and disease; at the same time, the gogos will not be around forever. "We are leading to a different world," says one, "where children will be doing whatever they feel. They will be wild." Confirms the nurse, " If they don't take care of themselves, Swaziland will cease to exist."

With a rare lucidity, "Today the Hawk Takes One Chick" catches the sound of the wind whistling through an entire people's graveyard and wonders about the long road back.

Ty Burr can be reached at tburr@globe.com. For more on movies, go to boston.com/ae/movies/blog.