DER Documentary
Mercy (med-dah)
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by Jeanne Hallacy and Jamlong Saiyot
color, 50 min, 2002
Pricing information and conditions
Filmed over two years at a community hospice in Klong Toey, Thailand, the story unfolds as a thirteen-year-old girl, Luk Nam, recalls the loss of her family to AIDS. Mercy is an unsettling document of another side to the growing AIDS crisis – the future of the children whose parents are HIV-positive or have died from AIDS-related illnesses. Surrounded by orphaned children who have inherited the disease, the filmmakers witness both Luk Nam’s sister and her best friend gradually fade away. Despite the horror of their circumstances, young Luk Nam and the hospice patients and workers show incredible compassion, strength, and hope. Luk Nam’s brave composure is as admirable as it is distressing, as when she assures the viewer: “Right now, I’m alive.”
Reviews
“Mercy is a powerful and uplifting documentary revealing the everyday life challenges faced by an increasing number of children orphaned by HIV/AIDS in Thailand today. Coping with family loss and the accompanying stigma often places children affected by HIV/AIDS in extremely vulnerable situations. This unprecedented crisis will require scaled-up national, regional and community responses in the decades to come.”
— Dr. Peter Piot, UNAIDS Executive Director
“Mercy is a realistic and powerful portrayal of the world wide effects of HIV/AIDS on children. It gives us a chance to observe this ongoing crisis first hand. I highly recommend this film for college populations and everyone who wishes to make a difference in the fight against AIDS.”
—Scott Butler, MS, CPPE,
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
“Mercy is a very moving, beautiful, poignant portrayal of a few years in the life of a very stoic, heroic child under horrendous circumstances. As a physician caring for children with HIV and AIDS for the past 20 years, I felt it showed so graphically the pain and suffering of those affected by but not infected with HIV, those who are living in the shadow of AIDS. Your film was an eye-opening experience for so many in our institution, who tend to forget what family members experience, while the focus is so much on the sick child.”
—Ann Petru, M.D.
Associate Physician, Dept of Infectious Diseases
Director, Pediatric AIDS/HIV Program
Children's Hospital & Research Center at Oakland
“As one who has been involved with research in and about Thailand for over 40 years and as one who regularly teaches courses on culture and society of Southeast Asia, I found the film Mercy to be very powerful and compelling.
It is clear from the film itself that the filmmaker was not only an observer, but was very much involved in the metta which the film depicts so well.”
—Professor Charles Keyes, Anthropology & International Studies
University of Washington, Seattle
“This film will be as useful for classroom teaching as it will for special events related to AIDS and hospice care. It's a rare film that can do so much in such a meaningful way.”
—Sara Van Fleet
Assistant Director of the SE Asia Center
University of Washington
“ Together with a group of very dedicated and exceptionally unselfish people at the Mercy Centre in Bangkok, Hallacy shows us that the human spirit is marvelous and that when we support each other it is possible to generate hope even in the darkest of times.”
—Ole Schack Hansen
Director, Asia Pacific Development Communication Centre (ADCC)
Dhurakijpundit University
Bangkok, Thailand
Film Festivals & Awards
Premiere, Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand, Bangkok, 2002
World AIDS Day screening, UNAIDS, Bangkok, Thailand, 2002
World AIDS Day screening, Mercy Center, Klong Toey, Thailand, 2002
UNESCO Sub Regional Conference on Anticipating the Impact of HIV/AIDS on the
Education Sector in Southeast Asia, Thailand, 2002
International Conference on Culture and Context in Development, Bangkok, Thailand, 2002
"Culture, Context and Choice: Issues in Development," organized by SEAMEO-SPAFA, sponsored by UNESCO and the Japan Foundation, Bangkok, Thailand, 2002
SEAMEO-SPAFA Buddhism and HIV/AIDS, Bangkok, Thailand, 2003
Bangkok International Film Festival, 2003
"Sharing Luk Nam’s Story with Thai Communities," Mobile AIDS Awareness Tour, over 75 screenings, Thailand, 2003
4th SIMA Film Festival, Tehran, Iran, 2003
Special Jury Award, Ojai Film Festival, Oak View, California, 2003
University of California - Irvine Human Rights Film Festival, 2003
Durango Film Festival, Colorado, 2003
East Asia Institute of Visual Anthropology Film Festival, Yunnan University, March 2004
Pärnu International Documentary and Anthropology Film Festival, Estonia, 2004
Fukuoka Asian Film Festival, Japan, 2004
Pride International Film Festival, Manila, 2004
2004 AIDS Film Festival, Bangkok, 2004
New Zealand International Human Rights Film Festival, 2005
Screenings
University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, 2002
The Lighthouse AIDS Hospice, London, 2002
Bangkok University, 2002
Chiang Mai University, 2002
San Francisco State University, 2003
City College of San Francisco, 2003
University of Washington - Seattle, 2003
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, 2003
Maryland Institute College of Arts, Baltimore, 2003
Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, 2003
Columbia University, New York, 2003
Univeristy of California - Berkeley, 2003
San Francisco Art Institute, 2003
Maitri AIDS Hospice, San Francisco, 2003
Oakland Childrens Hospital, Oakland, 2003
National Broadcast, Thailand, 2003
Chulalongkorn University, Thailand, 2004
Chiang Mai University, Thailand, 2004
Bangkok University, Thailand, 2004
Dhurakitpundit University, Thailand, 2004
Veterans Affairs Hospital, Seattle, December 2003
Psychosocial Medicine rounds, Roosevelt Clinic, University of Washington Medical Center, March 2004
XV International AIDS Conference, Bangkok, Thailand, 2004
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