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Today the Hawk Takes One Chick

Jane Gillooly

Today the Hawk Takes One Chick

About

Amidst the highest prevalence of HIV in the world and the lowest life expectancy, three grandmothers in Swaziland, a small, landlocked country in southern Africa between South Africa and Mozambique, cope in this critical moment in time. The generation between the grandmothers and their grandchildren has been severely affected by HIV. Today the Hawk Takes One Chick moves delicately between the lives of the grandmothers, whose experiences highlight a rural community at the threshold of simultaneous collapse and reinvention. 

Through the poignant perspective of these women, the film creates a portrait of a community by layering discrete moments in time. Presented without overt narrative structure or narration, the film's drama emerges from the patient accumulation of steady details that, in sum, tell a greater story of family in a world dictated by AIDS. 

The events in the film occur in a rural area within a 15-mile radius. In Swaziland, nearly 40% of people are HIV positive and life expectancy has dropped to 32-years. The lives of the three grandmothers have been consumed by addressing the needs of their community while at the same time retaining the threads of the fraying traditional life. 

Through verité footage and recordings of intimate conversations, the gentle beauty of the rural Swaziland landscape and way of life are in stark contrast with the urgency of the grandmothers' everyday lives: families living off World Food Program rations, a missing generation of productive young adults, children surviving without parents. These crises all combine and overwhelm what should be the grandmothers' time to retire, relax and be taken care of by adult children. 

What is life when sickness and death are an everyday experience? For these grandmothers, there is no choice but to steadfastly persevere and refuse to abandon their children. As more and more insight into the women's lives is revealed, we are forced to ponder the question asked by granny Albertina: "What will happen when all the grannies are dead?"


Reviews

"Beautiful and wonderfully crafted, its importance pours out."  — Ryan Haidarian, Head of Development & Production, National Film and Video Foundation, South Africa
"This is a poignant and beautifully perceptive portrait of three extraordinarily dynamic grandmothers (gogos), resolutely holding their families together in the wake of the Swaziland AIDS crisis. Director Jane Gillooly's respect for her film's subjects, her sensitive camera and seamless editing create a delicate balance between the culturally specific aspects of the gogos' lives and the universality of their tragedies." — Ilisa Barbash, Curator of Visual Anthropology, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology

Film Links

Study Guide (PDF)

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Credits

SCREENINGS & AWARDS

Virginia Film Festival, 2007 

Institute of Contemporary Art, Massachusetts, 2008

Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, North Carolina, 2008

Sarasota Film Festival, Florida, 2008

Cornell Cinema, New York, 2008

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 2008

MIT, Women in Film and Video, 2008

Kansas International Film Festival, 2008

Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival, 2008

Mexico City International Contemporary Film Festival, 2008

Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival, New York, 2008

Maryland Film Festival, Maryland, 2008

Voices From the Waters Film Festival, India, 2008

Festival of Visual Culture, Finland, 2008

Newburyport Documentary Film Festival, Massachusetts, 2008

Planet in Focus Environmental Film Festival, Canada, 2008

New Hampshire Film Festival, 2008

Margaret Mead Film Festival, New York, 2008

ReFrame Peterborough International Film Festival, Canada, 2008

Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival, New York, 2008

Tartu Festival of Visual Culture, Estonia, 2009

Southeast Museum of Photography, Daytona, FL, 2009

Convergence Conference on Art & Activism, Tufts University, 2009

Margaret Mead Traveling Film Festival, 2009 - 2010

Addis International Film Festival, Ethiopia, 2010


Today the Hawk Takes One Chick


Directed by 

Jane Gillooly


Writing Credits

Maribeth Edmonds

Jane Gillooly


Produced by 

Jane Gillooly


Music by 

John Kusiak


Cinematography by 

Karin Slater


Editing by 

Jane Gillooly

Carolyn Kaylor


Learning Resources

339 - Today the Hawk Takes One Chick - Study Guide

PDF

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