By Kamil Zaheer NEW DELHI, Jan 22 (Reuters) - Four top Bollywood directors are to make short films dealing with HIV/AIDS that will be shown before blockbuster releases, hoping to use their stars' pulling power to spread awareness of the deadly virus in India. The low-budget, 12-minute movies will be shown at theatres ahead of full-length commercial Bollywood films that star well-known actors, said Mira Nair, the India-born director of "Mississippi Masala" and the sensuous hit "Kama Sutra", on Monday. "The idea is to piggyback on blockbusters to spread AIDS awareness," Nair said at a news conference in a country that has the world's largest population living with the deadly virus. "We want to use cinema (against AIDS) so that it holds a mirror to the world and gets under your skin." The movies will be funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation which is spending $258 million on HIV prevention efforts in India over a five-year period. Nair, who is making one of the 12-minute films which will be titled "Migration", said she had been unable to get A-list Bollywood actors to feature in the films on AIDS. "Lots of stars don't want to be associated with the virus," the feisty director said, adding: "Some live and don't learn." The other directors involved in the venture are Santosh Sivan, who directed the critically acclaimed "The Terrorist", Farhan Akthar, who made the box office hit "Dil Chahta Hai" (What the Heart Wants), and Vishal Bhardwaj who made "Omkara" -- a Bollywood take on William Shakespeare's Othello. "We do not want to preach but entertain. Once you start preaching and teaching, people get bored," Bhardwaj said. The directors are hoping the movies will be released in cinemas within a few months, and Nair said the initial response from distributors had been positive. Two of the short movies would be in Hindi while the other two would be in south Indian languages like Tamil, a press statement about the AIDS Jaggo (Wake up to AIDS) initiative said. According to UNAIDS, India has 5.7 million people living with HIV/AIDS and stigma and prejudice is widespread. Many people, including some federal lawmakers, believe that a person can get HIV by shaking hands with an infected person, surveys have shown. In recent years, Bollywood has made two full-length movies on HIV/AIDS. Neither was a commercial success.
