AIDS: Iceberg

Simple and devastatingly effective, a key advert from the UK's first major AIDS awareness campaign.

With its simple and iconic imagery this is public information film at its most sensational: expensive special effects and high-concept production design brought public information filmmaking into the realm of state-of-the-art corporate advertising. The film was the result of a £5 million cinema and television campaign, launched in early 1987 and aimed at combating the growing spread of HIV/AIDS. This version of Iceberg did not feature John Hurt's famous voiceover, which is heard in another campaign film, Monolith (also available on BFI Player).

With restrictions around the overt promotion of condom use on television and a growing chorus of moral campaigners promulgating their own agenda, the straightforward and doom-laden approach was probably the only viable option for campaign mastermind Sammy Harari. But the result was a hard-hitting and memorable campaign which undoubtedly fulfilled its brief of pervading public consciousness. This government film is a public record, preserved and presented by the BFI National Archive on behalf of The National Archives, home to more than 1,000 years of British history.