Roston, Miles

PERSONAL:

Male.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Australia.

CAREER:

Filmmaker, composer, and writer. Director of movies, including Last Chance for Peace: Sierra Leone, Babelfish Productions, 2000; Aliens among Us, Babelfish Productions, 2002; 14 Million Dreams, Babelfish Productions, 2003; Make It Real (to Me), International Production Services Australia, 2005. Producer of movies, including Clone Story, 2002; and God in Government, 2004. Composer for the movies Aliens among Us, 2002; Make It Real (to Me), 2005; and Photograph, 2006.

WRITINGS:

SCREENPLAYS

(With Sarah Lambert, and director) Last Chance for Peace: Sierra Leone, Babelfish Productions, 2000.

(With Sarah Lambert, and director) Aliens among Us, Babelfish Productions, 2002.

(And director) 14 Million Dreams, Babelfish Productions, 2003.

(And director) Make It Real (to Me), International Production Services Australia, 2005.

OTHER

Kevin's Questions, Exisle Publishing (Titirangi, Auckland, New Zealand), 2006.

Taking Away the Distance: An African AIDS Orphan and His Crusade to Unite the Children Orphaned by the Epidemic, Carroll & Graf (New York, NY), 2007.

SIDELIGHTS:

Miles Roston is a filmmaker who has written, directed, and produced films from documentaries to a children's series. His projects as writer and director include Last Chance for Peace: Sierra Leone, Aliens among Us, 14 Million Dreams, and Make It Real (to Me). He also has worked as a producer for Clone Story and God in Government, and as the composer for the films Aliens among Us, Make It Real (to Me), and Photograph.

Roston is a staunch proponent of AIDS awareness, and some of his films deal with this subject, such as the documentary 14 Million Dreams, released in 2003, which is about five orphans of AIDS in Kenya and Malawi. Released two years later in 2005, Make It Real (to Me) follows seventeen-year-old Kenyan AIDS orphan Kevin Sumba, who was featured originally in 14 Million Dreams. Kevin lost both of his parents to AIDS at the age of ten and has been living alone since, struggling for food, shelter, and an education. Make It Real (to Me) follows Kevin's search for answers to what can be done to stop the global AIDS crisis.

In an interview with an Encore magazine contributor, Roston said of his interest in AIDS, "As a filmmaker, I think the AIDS epidemic is an extraordinarily dramatic story that has been, considering its importance, ignored, and Kevin's is an extraordinary story too. It's a dramatic human story, and there are just so many millions of human stories caught in this epidemic—all kinds of different ones."

The book Kevin's Questions, published in 2006, is based on Roston's film Make It Real (to Me). The book sets out to answer several questions inspired by Kevin's quest for answers about AIDS and the global AIDS crisis, such as what can one do to protect himself against the disease? What are orphans' rights? What is the global community doing about this epidemic? In order to answer these and other questions, the author goes to all corners of the globe to get the perspective of various people from different walks of life involved with the AIDS crisis, from top policymakers and experts to people who have been directly affected by the epidemic such as children left homeless on Nairobi's streets and a mother on her deathbed. Desmond Tutu, a South African cleric and activist, has written the foreword to this book. "Kevin's speech is the climax of the book," noted Hazel Rochman in a review of the book for Booklist.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, November 15, 2007, Hazel Rochman, "Taking Away the Distance: An African AIDS Orphan and His Crusade to Unite the Children Orphaned by the Epidemic," p. 9.

Encore, December 1, 2005, "Keeping It Real in Kenya: Australian-Based but American-Born Filmmaker Miles Roston Discusses His Latest Project, Make It Real, Which Examines the AIDS Epidemic," p. 17.

ONLINE

Exisle Publishing Web site,http://www.exislepublishing.com/ (August 16, 2008), biographical information on Miles Roston.

Make It Real (to Me) Web site,http://www.makeitrealtome.com (August 16, 2008), biographical information on Miles Roston.

Smiley Documentary Film Distribution, Ltd. Web site,http://www.smileyfilmdistribution.com/ (August 16, 2008), biographical information on Miles Roston.