Here's how he and the cast avoided being hypnotised by prisoners during the shoot
Director Farhan Akhtar is still reeling from the "strange and eerie silence" of the jail. The highly anticipated film is the first one to be shot in Malacca prison, and a complete section of the prison block was made available for the shoot. About 700 prisoners were air-lifted and moved to another cell to accommodate the filming.
And the Don's junglee billi Roma - aka Priyanka Chopra in a cop's role - was anxious to "break the rules". One theory doing the rounds was that the prisoners could hypnotise people, hence the crew was told to avoid making eye contact with them. PC wanted to find out if this was true, but had to adhere by the rules. "Even though we never came in contact with the inmates, our movements inside the prison were restricted. It was like being locked up!" adds the leading lady.
"The prisoners would stand facing the wall whenever we drove from one cell block to another. Whenever any prisoner tried to turn and look at us from the corner of their eye, they were screamed at," says Boman Irani, who plays a pivotal role in the film. With Shah Rukh's strong fan base among the Malays and him being conferred the prestigious Malaysian title of Datuk (akin to a British knighthood), it became easy to get permission to shoot in Malacca. But a lot of security measures were taken to facilitate it. Once the crew entered the premises in the morning, they could leave only when the shoot was over and everyone had to exit together. Besides that, actors and crew members were not allowed to carry their cellphones or laptops into the prison.
Produced by Ritesh Sidhwani, Don 2 - The Chase Continues is slated to release on December 23.
Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/entertainment/bollywood/news-interviews/Shah-Rukh-Khan-in-Malaysian-jail/articleshow/10943426.cms
Shah Rukh Khan in Malaysian jail
HIV/AIDS at 30: Spreading the Word
To mark World AIDS Day (1 December) this year, BHIVA (the British HIV Association) held a World AIDS Day Event in collaboration with the Wellcome Trust on the theme HIV/AIDS at 30: Back to the Future. 2011 is the thirtieth anniversary of the first description of AIDS -- a milestone in the continuing epidemic that has claimed the lives of millions of people worldwide. While reflecting on the experiences and work of the past 30 years, eminent speakers reviewed today's challenges, and looked ahead to consider how the knowledge of the past will inform future strategies.
One aspect of the epidemic that was considered was the way in which health authorities, activists and charities around the world have tried to prevent its spread by publicity, including posters. The Wellcome Library now has over 3,200 AIDS posters from many countries. The exhibition Spreading the Word: AIDS Posters from Around the World is a selection of 24 posters chosen and interpreted by Dr Sarah Graham of Leicester University, and shown earlier this year at the New Walk Museum in Leicester.
The posters emphasize the range of graphic techniques adopted and the variety of ethnic and social groups at which they were directed. Spreading the Word was also on display today at the BHIVA/Wellcome Trust meeting (left) and was much appreciated by those attending.
Among the work publicised at the conference was a recent volume in the series Wellcome Witnesses to Twentieth Century Medicine, which was published in November 2011. It concerns the controversial National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (NATSAL) which was launched in 1990. "A proposal that the UK Department of Health would fund it, after scientific scrutiny by the Economic and Social Research Council, was vetoed at government level – some say by Mrs Thatcher herself – on the grounds that this would be an unacceptable intrusion into private lives. This decision hit the headlines (first in The Sunday Times), as did the decision, some four weeks after the story broke, by the Wellcome Trust to step in and fund it instead. There is a similar story to be told of obstruction from the Bush White House,which forbade funding from the National Institutes for Health (NIH) for the American survey" (pp. xxi-xxii).The phrase "some say by Mrs Thatcher herself" is backed up on p. 67 by a separate statement in the book (Appendix 3, pp. 66-68) by Dr Peter Williams, Director of the Wellcome Trust at the time, who received that account of events in a phone call from the Chief Medical Officer, Sir Donald Acheson. A note by Professor Virginia Berridge (p. 61) suggests that the reality behind the scenes may have been more complicated, but that at any rate Downing Street was happy to go along with the veto. More of the raw materials for this episode are set out in the volume, in the usual Witness Seminar manner: the spoken memories of people who were involved in the events at the time, provided with scholarly commentary and often with competing points of view. It makes compulsive reading. It is available in hard-copy from booksellers and Amazon, and available free of charge on the web as a PDF. [2]
[1] Overy C, Reynolds L A, Tansey E M. (eds) (2011) History of the National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles. Wellcome Witnesses to Twentieth Century Medicine, vol. 41. London: Queen Mary, University of London. ISBN 978 090223 874 9
[2] http://www.history.qmul.ac.uk/research/modbiomed/wellcome_witnesses/index.html
