TRIBUTE TO HUW CHRISTIE
By Joan Shenton
17 Aug. 2001
A personal tribute to Huw Christie who died on 17 August 2001, from Joan Shenton
It is with great sorrow that I receive the news of the loss of such a friend. Huw was a great man and will live on in the memory of those who knew him, and of those who did not, because his tireless campaigning for the greater good will continue to reverberate into the future like a sustained chord.
I met Huw through Peter Duesberg in 1994. Peter had rung up to say that a film producer called Huw Christie-Williams in London, with a production company called Brazen Films was looking into the AIDS debate and those who questioned the viral/AIDS hypothesis. He wanted more information. Duesberg read me Huw’s letter over the telephone. It was in Huw’s usual style, beautifully phrased, persuasive and rigorous. In this letter he explained that he had been diagnosed HIV antibody positive a year earlier.
Of course, I wanted to meet him and so we did. From then on I became caught up in his world and, to a certain extent, he in mine. We collaborated through our work on the "dissident" AIDS front. When he became editor of Continuum magazine and my small independent production company was in difficulty he allowed me to move into his offices.
It was the daily contact with his intellectual rigor that shaped many of my ideas about more recent developments in the AIDS arguments – more specifically the issues on the identification of HIV and the work of the Perth Group on the unreliability of the HIV test.
Huw was a man of immense talent. He spent his childhood in South Africa and Australia. He read English at Brasenose College, Oxford and on his return to Australia had a very successful acting career. His Valmont in Les Liaisons Dangereuses with the Royal Queensland Theatre Company was outstanding. He also had roles in several feature films including Wide Sargasso Sea directed by John Duigan, For Love Alone directed by Stephen Brooks and The Riddle of Stinson, directed by Chris Noonan
Huw himself directed Giving Up the Ghost for the Festival of New Australian Theatre and co-produced the half hour 16mm film Lavender Bay Getaway.
I knew more of other talents such as the courageous campaigner for human rights, intellectual powerhouse and meticulous magazine editor.
He was a contributor to New African magazine and Index on Censorship. He was also Associate Producer of Positively False for Channel 4 News, and the documentary AIDS – A Second Opinion for Gary Null Productions. Together with Sara Ayech, Dmitri Guskov and Martin Walker he spearheaded a joint project with the European Commission on health, immunity and nutrition in the Ukraine.
Huw spent the last two years of his editorship of Continuum highlighting and supporting the work of Eleni Eleopulos, Dr Valendar Turner and the Perth Group.
He and I traveled together to Johannesburg, invited by Anita Allen and with her help were able to interview President Thabo Mbeki for a half hour programme "Search for Solutions" transmitted to 42 countries across Africa on MNet.
When we moved our offices into a vast old abandoned garment warehouse, people used to trek across the world to consult him, but those who worked near him like Sara Ayech, Clair Walton, Michael Baumgartner, Alex Russell, Hector Gildemeister, Michael Verney-Elliott and I were lucky enough to have him close at hand for an animated spaghetti or noodles session at the end of the day.
We shall miss him.
More tributes