The first film to be shown on the evening will be Deafness, from the Ukraine and director Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy. If Ukrainian deafness seems familiar, then it is because Broadway recently screened the director's feature length, brutal, and excellent deaf film, The Tribe. This ten minute short film was considered as a kind of pilot for the feature length film by Slaboshpytskiy and is about a young deaf Ukrainian experiencing police corruption first hand. The entire film is shot in one take, in the way that every scene of The Tribe is, and it shares its feature length companion’s intensity and ambition.
The next film will be Flo, from Riley Hooper. This is a hugely interesting documentary about Flo Fox, a New York street photographer, who continues her passion despite near-blindness, Multiple Sclerosis, and lung cancer. She narrates throughout, as we see her wheel around New York City, telling us her story and occasionally stopping to direct her carer to take the photographs – a task Flo cannot physically complete any longer. She has taken some amazing photos over the years and her loveable eccentricity is captured in a hilarious past photo series called Dickthology.
The third film will be the Canadian Hole, from Martin Edralin. This fictional film is shot like a documentary, particularly in the opening scene, in which we see the physically disabled Billy, played by Ken Harrower, waking and then dressing himself. The day-to-day mundane tasks we see Billy struggling with, and his sexual feelings for his attractive male carer, all slowly build us towards the literal meaning of the short film’s title. This is a great short film which balances the disability and homosexual themes with subtity and perfection.
Next will be The End, a UK mockumentary from director Ted Evans, which follows a collection of fictional deaf people for over a few decades years (in a way reminiscent of the The Up Series). We see our protagonists in 1987, 1995, 2008, and 2031 and the story is propelled by the world finding a cure for deafness. A deaf person himself, Ted Evans has made a great film that shows a perspective I could not have imagined myself – that some deaf people would want to stay deaf and would protest about the treatment being forced on them.
The final film is feature length UK Premiere and comes from the Netherlands. Dre Didderiëns’ My White Shirt is a documentary that follows Rob Krikke, a young man with Down’s Syndrome. The film is a valiant and successful attempt at showing Rob dealing with the grief of his sister’s sudden death, as he acts out his feelings in what will become a professional play. Blurring the lines between film and theatre and fact and fiction, this is a thoroughly engrossing and original hour and ten minutes, that will headline another top notch programme of films from the NAFN peeps.
The Nottingham Alternative Film Network’s New Perspectives will be shown at the fully accessible Pearson Centre for Young People in Beeston on Saturday 15 August 2015 at 7pm. The event will be raising funds for the charity Disability Direct.
NAFN Website
Disability Direct Website
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