Educational Media Reviews Online

Undetectable is a 57minute program that invites the viewer to walk in the world of six people from several ethnic and cultural backgrounds who have been diagnosed with AIDS. Each are seen at differing stages throughout a three year period starting in 1997 experimenting with the latest AIDS vaccines, “NRTI’s or nukes” in the lingo of HIV research. The viewer gets to share the real-life experience of these people who must get up everyday and take 20 to 25 pills (cocktails) to ensure that the once pre-determined death sentence that AIDS brought can now be stayed-even for a short time.

The viewer meets Matilde, a recovering addict from Puerto Rico who struggles with the drug regimen and its adverse side effects on her already ravished body. Included in this viewing is the everyday family conflicts poverty places on her husband and children. Anibal is another person introduced to the viewer who has been battling heroin addiction and HIV. Once again the ordinary difficulties of survival, family relations, getting the medical assistance needed to treat a wide variety of ailments, Anibal is another person whose AIDS conflict is brought to the forefront via Corcoran’s artistic filmmaking process.

What makes Undetectable so riveting is its currency. Today the medical profession is looking for new ways to fight this deadly disease, which is aptly illustrated throughout this film. We meet Maltide, Annabel, Belynda, Joe, Carol and David as each struggle through their treatment regimens, their doctors, counselors, families and their ongoing and ever-evolving problems as they attempt to recover with the assistance of combination drug therapy With the illustrated new treatment regimens come new social, political, emotional and economic realities that each react to individually and collectively as a group. They all have one thing in common: AIDS. And their reality is to survive and beat this killer in a last hope effort. Each realize that ultimately there are no easy answers and a successful treatment for one patient does not necessarily mean success for everyone overall. Hope, fear, and the continued treatment are what the viewer sees in each of the faces of these very human individuals. We see their tears, their joys, and hope with them that a cure for AIDS is found in their lifetime.