Lights, camera, action on AIDS
India's Bollywood joins the fight against HIV
(CNN) -- India is a country of movie-lovers and its top actors and actresses are given superstar status and have a huge influence on popular culture.
Hindi Cinema -- known as Bollywood -- is the largest producer of feature films in the world, but until now it has not addressed the issue of HIV.
By many accounts, the problem is spiraling out of control.
According to a report in the Hindustan Times, India's AIDS cases had risen to 5.1 million by 2003, making the country's HIV-positive population second only to that of South Africa.
HIV is also making its way from sex workers and intravenous drug users to the general population.
Embracing the notion that one way of prevention is awareness, Bollywood has finally joined the fight against the virus by releasing the film "Phir Milenge."
Translated to "We Will Meet Again," the film stars Bollywood heroine Shilpa Shetty, who plays a business executive who is fired after it's discovered she has HIV.
The story tracks the character's battle against discrimination and the pursuit of recovering her dignity.
"We prefer to call ourselves conservative when we're actually hypocritical. And I think each one of us needs to deal with it on a war footing instead of leaving others to do it," Shetty said.
Director Revathy, who starred in 2003's "Darna Mana Hai," wanted to maintain some important themes in the film.
"I did not want the woman to be married. The normal thing is to have her married and she contracts it from her husband.
"And at the same time we wanted that strength in her to be able to go through a phase like this in her life, and come out of it unscathed and continue life. The most important message for me out of this was that HIV does not mean death," she said.
Both Revathy and Shetty have been involved in many Bollywood blockbusters, and while "Phir Milenge" hasn't matched their most popular box office hits, it has reached a decent number of cinema-goers and raised their levels of HIV awareness.
"It was definitely a very bold step taken by Bollywood, and we need more films like 'Phir Milenge' to really change the perception of HIV/AIDS among the masses," one member of the movie-going public said.
