Landmark Doin’ My Drugs Documentary Commemorates “Zero Discrimination Day”
With Swiss Premiere Screening as Initiative of UN Information Service
Danish Pop Star Screens his Documentary 1 March 2020, Following Film’s
2019 World AIDS Day Screening in China and CPH:DOX* World Premiere
WHO: Film subject, recording artist and AIDS activist Thomas Muchimba Buttenschøn; Doin’ My Drugs Documentary director Tyler Q Rosen; Kevin Osborne, Executive Director, the International AIDS Society; Charlotte Sector, Multimedia Communications Manager, United Nations (ONU) UNAIDS
WHAT: Swiss Premiere Screening of Doin’ My Drugs film in Geneva followed by discussion: HIV: 40 years Later, Discrimination Still Kills, with panelists Buttenschøn, Rosen, and Osborne; Charlotte Sector, moderator.
WHEN: Doin’ My Drugs Screening: 1 March 2020, 11:00h
WHERE: Cinéma CINÉRAMA EMPIRE, Rue de Carouge 72-74 Geneva. Phone: +86.10.5798.9798. Admission Free; all ages.
MORE: Doin’ My Drugs is the story of musician Thomas Muchimba Buttenschøn—born HIV-positive in 1985—and his crusade to use his music to wipe out AIDS in his native Zambia and beyond. Doin’ My Drugs aims to raise awareness about the ongoing HIV/AIDS epidemic in Zambia — a country of 17 million people where more than 1.2 million are HIV-positive or have the disease. Zambia’s situation is mirrored throughout the developing world.
A father to two young children, Buttenschøn has kept his HIV in check and his family virus-free, by “doin’ his drugs.” He recognized that his native Zambia remains trapped in a horrific and senseless AIDS crisis. While a significant percentage of the population there is infected with HIV, many antiretroviral drug treatment programs that keep the virus dormant—“a near-zero viral load” as Buttenschøn says—are widely available through government programs for free.
Buttenschøn has recorded a full studio album in LA and Lusaka, Zambia with 16-time Grammyâ-winning producer, Thom Russo Jr. That album is titled Doin’ My Drugs and will become the official motion picture soundtrack. He debuted a new single, Keep On Talking, on his China tour.
Buttenschøn has also set up a foundation, the Muchimba Music Foundation, to help his supporters, collaborators and himself on their journeys. His goal is to test upwards of 100,000 Zambians by expanding his foundation’s Test-for-Ticket concert series into a country-wide tour of Zambia. The Muchimba Music Foundation’s initial concert in Lusaka tested 10,802 people and enrolled those who tested positive into patient care treatment programs. MMF is currently fundraising to meet his goal. The Muchimba Music Foundation is planning to produce a second major concert on World AIDS Day this year, Dec.1: Zed Me Free 2. Zed Me Free and joining UNAIDS is Muchimba’s latest move to acquire more partners with a goal to reduce HIV infection in Zambia and beyond.
UNAIDS, the United Nations Information Service Geneva and the
International AIDS Society organized this screening to commemorate Zero Discrimination Day.
Founded in 1988, the IAS is the world’s largest association of HIV professionals, with members in more than 170 countries. Working with its members, the IAS advocates and drives urgent action to reduce the impact of HIV. The IAS is also the steward of the world’s most prestigious HIV conferences: the International AIDS Conference, the IAS Conference on HIV Science, and the HIV Research for Prevention Conference.
The team’s choice of Buttenschøn and his film—a former judge on the country’s wildly popular Denmark’s Got Talent (Danmark Har Talnet) is reflective of his and his family’s personal experience with HIV/AIDS, his renown in the country and the world premiere of the film based on his life and work that premiered in Copenhagen as a highlight of the prestigious CPH:DOX* music program, one of the world’s foremost documentary film and music festivals.
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