Selinah
The Topsy Foundation2010
Selinah is a 2010 90-second television and cinema commercial for The Topsy Foundation, created by Ogilvy Johannesburg.
The line
The effects of AIDS can be reversed.
Why it works
Selinah, a woman with AIDS, gets into bed looking healthy, and over a series of shots taken across 90 days she seems to waste away until she is skin and bone. Only at the end does the viewer realise the sequence has been running in reverse: what looked like dying was her recovery on antiretroviral drugs. Ogilvy Johannesburg and the Topsy Foundation, a charity caring for HIV-positive people in Mpumalanga, filmed her every day of her treatment and used no visual effects; the only trick is the order of the pictures. It is studied as a demonstration in which the edit itself is the argument, overturning the familiar image of the AIDS patient wasting away. The film won a Gold Lion at Cannes in 2010, South Africa's first Film Gold in 11 years, a Grand LIA at the London International Awards and a Gold Pencil at the One Show. Topsy reported an unprecedented influx of donors and a sharp rise in patients asking for treatment.
Techniques
- Demonstration Ninety days of real footage, with no visual effects, prove that antiretroviral treatment can bring a patient back from the brink.
- Storytelling Running the footage backwards creates a twist: what seems to be a decline is revealed at the end to have been a recovery.
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