Episode 4
Doing it our own way
Slowly, the end of the summer camp is approaching. Traditionally, there is always a competition during the last week. This year’s theme is difficult and exciting at the same time: “Love can’t make you sick – or can it?”
The theme causes a lot of confusion, and the camp supervisors help the young people by telling them about the competitions of previous years. Last year’s theme had been “Don’t play with your life” – equally difficult and fascinating.
Now, what is this competition about?
The young people in the camp are supposed to invent and design creative, funny or thought-provoking posters or films. The necessary material and technical equipment is provided. The young people are working in groups of four to six and have a week in which to prepare.. In the end, three winners are selected, and the other young people don’t come away empty-handed either at the Farewell Party.
Thelma, Natalya, Paolo and Max are racking their brains over this year’s theme. They soon agree that the subject must be sexually transmittable diseases. Natalya has overcome her “acne depression”, as Thelma calls it, long ago and offers the first idea, a song with lyrics that make Max blush: “Bad girls are fun, but the gonococci quickly come!” “No?” Natalya looks around. “Ah, no, this is better: Everybody is anxious, about AIDS and syphilis!” Roguishly, Natalya winks from under her hair. “Or even : Better do it with a condom, than become Mum and Dad at random!” Thelma is clutching her belly with laughter, while Max is blushing more deeply with every sentence. Paolo looks rather self-conscious, as inventing these kind of sayings are usually his role. But after a while they all laugh and rhyme around wildly. They are aware however that they won’t win the contest with these kinds of ideas. Max has no better idea than to write a modern fairy tale, and Thelma admits that she is not really creative in that direction. Paolo wraps himself in silence.
Therefore Max, Thelma and Natalya are very surprised when Paolo arrives late for their meeting on the veranda of the old villa the next day with a roguish smile on his face, and announces: “I have something that will solve our problem!” Under the curious gaze of his friends he pulls a CD out from under his jacket. “I worked a little bit on Eva, she is in the tent next to you girls, and the other day she showed me last year’s winner when her older sister was in the camp. And because I am such a nice guy, she lent me this until tomorrow!” Thelma tries to take the CD out of his hands, but Paolo holds it tightly. Thelma raises her eyebrows. “And now we look at it with our laser eyes and read what’s on it?” she asks mockingly. Paolo is taking a laptop out of his bag. “They also lent you this?” Natalya grins. “Of course!” Paolo puts the CD into the laptop and starts the film. When the short film ends, the four friends stay unusually quiet for a while. They are impressed. “Don’t play with your life”, Max murmurs quietly. “We could hand in this film for the contest,” suggests Paolo. “Yeah, what a super idea – the same thing twice,” Natalya looks at him sympathetically. “And what does the film want to tell us?” asks Max who is mulling over its content. This question provokes a lively discussion, and it becomes quite clear that they all have only a superficial knowledge of the subject.
“Did you know that AIDS can be transmitted by kissing?” Paolo asks. “Oh no, that’s nonsense,” replies Natalya. “You only get AIDS when you have unsafe sex.” And Thelma adds: “But the probability that you get infected is not very high.”
“But even if you get infected, “Max remembers, “Some medication against AIDS has been developed. So now AIDS can be cured.” Natalya does not agree. “We have never heard about this in Romania, and we have a lot of people with the HIVvirus in our country.” - “Before, in my parents’ generation, AIDS didn’t exist.” Paolo adds, “My father told me that they didn’t know anything about condoms. And he should certainly know, because he was the greatest gigolo of Calabria!” Max is astonished: “Like father like son.” Natalya can’t suppress a giggle. Thelma looks at Paolo with big, round eyes. “But then, where does the disease come from?” Max asks and finds that everyone is looking perplexed. “We don’t seem to know very much,” says Thelma, summing up.
Paolo has had enough. “Listen, we can’t do something about AIDS again. We don’t know much about it, and besides, the subject won the first prize last year. Let’s think about other diseases that you can get, or let’s do something completely different!”
“How do you mean, something completely different?” The others don’t understand what he’s getting at.
He explains: “Yeah, see, they do this competition every year. Everybody comes up with some nice ideas about AIDS, syphilis or other diseases, about which we should have some knowledge but haven’t, as we have just noticed. But it really gets on my nerves that we only talk about these things when someone from outside makes us, I mean, the supervisors here in the camp, or the media, the television, the newspapers. Do you understand?”
The others look confused. “Not really,” says Natalya, and Max and Thelma agree.
Paolo tries harder. “See, I don’t want to make a movie like last year. This one here is far too professional anyway, and we wouldn’t have any chance, given the fact that we are already too late anyway. Why not do something on the subject of: we only start to think about things when the media try to make us do so? You get it now?”
Paolo looks questioningly at the small group and continues: “The message I want to send is: Let’s look at it ourselves!” Max, Thelma and Natalya stand in front of Paolo with open mouths. What he says is not complicated but turns everything upside down .Thelma is very impressed: never has she seen Paolo like this during the last weeks – so excited, so committed. Enthusiastically she agrees with him: “Yes, Let’s look at it ourselves! That’s a motto I like! If we can’t win the competition, then why not go down in history as having the best outsider idea ever?” Thelma and Max nod and immediately share their first ideas. The ice is broken, they start work.
