On 24 May 1996, Cause of Death : Nothing was seen by an audience of hundreds at the City Hall of Amsterdam. "It was a huge happening," according to director Andre Reeder, "to honor the people who are in the film in our own Surinamese way. They have stuck out their neck to give this important message." Migrants against HIV/AIDS spoke with Reeder before the screening.

What was it like making Cause of Death : Nothing ?

It was a marvelous experience. It’s a film, in a way, about AIDS. In a way, about death. At the same time, it was a great festival for all the people who worked for the film. Now that the film is finished, I see that the good spirits were with this film. I didn’t have to look for the people. Ethel and Shanti came to the forefront. Then we had the most famous Surinamese singers and composers who wanted to do the music for the film. All I had to do was to make the script and to coordinate.

I had a very good friend, Morales, who got AIDS back in 1991. With a group of friends we stood by him until he died. I speak about him, and about what the Surinamese community lost when he died, in the film. But that experience opened my eyes to the very shocking reactiong toward him. There was great denial, and with that denial we are letting our beautiful people die. It was so sickening, it could not go on. I knew that I could not end the denial, but I thought that with my art I can give people a mirror of how we are acting.

What was the film’s greatest challenge ?

I don’t know if you know, but the Surinamese community exists of different cultures. The Dutch colonizers brought people from Africa. Then it was people from Indonesia, India, and China. There are also the original inhabitants, Amerindians. I am myself am very mixed and light-skinned - Chinese, Arab, Indian, Portuguese, call it a name.

Cause of Death : Nothing had to be filmed so that the majority of the population could recognize itself. So we decided to use the Surinamese language. Maybe that sounds normal, but even though the Surinamese language is spoken by everyone, it is never heard on television.

Was there an expectation that this would be a very didactic public health film ?

In the standard educational film, you see a few drawings - So many people died, so many have HIV -, and a doctor tells you what you should and shouldn’t do. Before you can even start talking technical stuff, you have to break the taboo and the prejudice. The mere fact that viewers would see some of their own people living with AIDS in the film, would confront them that AIDS is also something of our own people. I wanted the film to talk in a positive way about how, as a people, we are dealing with an HIV+ mother, or an brother with AIDS.

How does the white media show the Surinamese community ?

There may be more colored faces on TV in Holland, but it’s always from a white perspective. Surinamese people are criminals, junkies, poor, on social welfare, trouble-makers. Or they are famous football players or singers. But nothing in-between. Surinam itself is pictured as a banana republic. We were a colony of Holland for 300 years. Yet white people in the schools here know nothing about Surinamese history.

As a Surinamese film-maker, people don’t have faith in your capacity, in your intelligence, in the fact that you know what you feel best... They think they know you better than you know yourself. The reality is that everywhere in the western world, immigrant children have grown up. Even if you don’t want to put them on TV, it gets hard for you not to see them or to hold them back. In that sense, I think Dutch television doesn’t know what it’s missing out on.

I see a lot of black artists, who tried very much to adapt to the white society. Well, they are coming back from that. And they are looking at their own people, trying to form bonds. It goes very slowly. But I think it’s a very positive thing.

Is a film about AIDS - Black people dying of a disease and not, say, of police bullets - more palatable to white media ?

It’s not that we don’t want to make those other films. You know, it’s more that, today, we are weak. We do deal with issues which are more acceptable, because we have no choice. You have to be inventive in other ways. With this film , we are actually bringing the Surinamese language - and non-stereotypical images - to television.

In the 1970s, many Surinamese came because they were afraid of coming independence. The city council paid house owners to take in Surinamese people. So many owners filled their houses to the roof. Our people were packed like rats, living in very bad conditions. I made a documentary called Operation : Rooftop. The film put it in plain sight a reality which nobody wanted to see, or which people were trying to hide.

In 1982, Operation : Rooftop was taken off the programming two weeks before broadcast. Not even the local, migrant television of Amsterdam would show it.

So why keep making films ?

As a small boy in Surinam, I lived in a village where they mined bauxite. The sole theater always showed two films. Hollywood movies, but also many Indian films. I remember being fascinated with the great camera shots of the outdoors, the scenes of masses of people... It touched me, and as soon as I was 9 years old I knew I wanted to be a filmmaker. But when I was 18 years old, I went to Holland to study geology.

It was in the Netherlands that I became politically-conscious. Film began to mean a way of expressing what I see around myself. All of my films have been acts of survival.