#ShortFilm: Bumming Cigarettes (Trailer)
Bumming Cigarettes is a short film about a brief and intimate meeting between a young Black lesbian woman who is in the process of taking an HIV test and a middle aged Black Gay HIV Positive man. Coming off of the devastation of a bad breakup with a girlfriend, Vee musters up the courage to go and take an HIV test to put her worst fears to rest. What she experiences during her trip to a local clinic is much more than she expects while sharing a cigarette with a stranger, Jimmy, during the 10 minutes that she awaits her test results.
Alia Hatch makes a strong debut in this short film, as a young Black lesbian woman looking to discover her status. This is a breakthrough performance for James Tolbert, a native Philadelphian and professional actor living with HIV for 21 years. Alia and James deliver a moving performance in this film that explores complex issues surrounding the HIV/AIDS epidemic including the loss of intimacy and stigma that persons living with HIV/AIDS may encounter, while also encouraging awareness around HIV/AIDS testing and the way we treat persons living with the disease.
Take a look at Alia Hatch's Actor Interview below
Tiona McClodden is a filmmaker and visual artist. She produces and distributes her work through her film and media imprint, Harriet's Gun Media whose mission is to produce and distribute works of art across a range of media platforms that examine, explore, and critique issues at the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality. Themes explored in McClodden's films have been social change, social realism, re-memory and more recently biomythography. She has produced, written and directed a range of films including her award winning feature-length documentary film, black./womyn.: conversations with lesbians of African descent, a short narrative film Bumming Cigarettes, and an experimental film portrait, roots.|&|rigor. featuring Philadelphia based sculpture artist Lorna Williams. She also recently debuted the exhibition of the first part of her upcoming four part series, Be Alarmed: The Black Americana Epic, Movement I - The Visions.
