Shameless the Art of Disability Movie What Does David Invest a Lot of Time in
 | Shameless: The ART of Inability. Bonnie Sherr Klein (Director & Writer). Tracey Friesen (Producer). Rina Fraticelli (Executive Producer). Subject area Headings: Grades 12 & upward / Ages 17 & upwardly. Review by Lois Brymer. **** / 4 |
excerpt:
I'm conscious of wanting to look good. Certainly at starting time I thought disability was hideous and I didn't desire to be identified as someone with a disability. I couldn't stand to walk by a mirror and run into myself walking and now the film I'k making grows out of that impulse to correct the images still have people tell their ain stories considering people with disabilities have not been represented in the media in anything like the truth that I discovered about our lives.
The people I know at present because of my stroke have enriched my life and are my teachers and mentors. They're fellow travellers and they're artists.
Bonnie Sherr Klein.
Shameless: The Fine art of Inability might have been called Freak Evidence, Piss on Compassion, In Your Face up, Exposing Ourselves, Dreams of Freaks, or My Fractured Fine art Career, difficult-hitting titles a grouping of (dis)abled activist artist friends came upward with for Bonnie Sherr Klein's aboveboard and compelling film well-nigh "inability culture" and "the transformative power of art." Then once more, the title could take been dubbed, When Life Hands You a Lemon, Make Lemonade because that is what this film reveals most these remarkable "stars" who have absolutely pushed back "the demons of shame and humiliation." Driven by their art and drawn together past their differences, they take overcome seemingly impossible obstacles to detect or maintain their identity, dignity, cocky respect, joie de vivre and place in order.
Equally the group, namely stand-up comic and motivational speaker David Roche, aka "Reverend Dave" of his 1-man show fame, The Church of fourscore% Sincerity, Catherine Frazee, poet, writer, teacher, speaker and "inability guru," Geoff McMurchy, choreographer, artistic director of Vancouver's 2004 KickstART celebration (an international festival of visual and literary art, music, theatre and comedy performed and created by people with disabilities) and "Renaissance guy," Persimmon Blackridge, visual artist, sculptor, writer (Prozac Highway, Nevertheless Sane, Sunnybrook: A Truthful Story with Lies) and "bad daughter", sit down effectually a table to brainstorm ideas with writer/manager, disability rights activist and "earnest filmmaker" Bonnie Klein, their opinions convey an honest, frank and even lighthearted show-and-tell-it-all-like-it-is mental attitude as to how they want to exist portrayed in Shameless. They insist that do not desire to take people down the sentimental or overly-heroic route. There is definitely a dogged determination amongst the grouping to dispel the perceived myth of disability as tragedy. Klein is an award-winning "pioneer of women'due south cinema" (Not a Love Story: A Film well-nigh Pornography, 1981) who suffered 2 virtually fatal strokes in 1987 that left her paralyzed and able simply to move her eyes as a ways of advice. A respirator helped her to breathe and talk, and brain surgery and extensive rehabilitation allowed her to "fight her mode dorsum" from consummate helplessness. Whether on a motorized scooter, a iii-wheeled wheel, a walker or ii canes, Klein is both the interviewer and the interviewee who is in the driver'south seat as she works with her camera crew to document the individual stories of her various creative person friends. Not only does the moving-picture show intimately show each person'due south (including Klein's) vulnerabilities, frustrations and challenges, information technology uncovers a surprising and perhaps enviable richness of life that many and then called "normal" people never experience.
Set mostly in British Columbia (Vancouver, Roberts Creek on the Sunshine Coast, and Hornby Island, one of the Gulf Islands in the Strait of Georgia) with brief clips in San Francisco and Nova Scotia'due south Annapolis Valley, the documentary opens with Klein'due south image in her bath mirror. She is putting on her makeup. As if she's having a conversation with the viewer near her film, she confesses, "I try to hide the blemishes as much as I desire to talk most presenting authentic images." A few minutes afterwards, the camera zooms in on a lively conversation that Roche, Frazee, McMurchy, Blackridge and Klein are having about how they think society sees them. They make a game of identifying stereotypical images of people with disabilities similar to theirs in old Hollywood movies. Roche, born with a vascular malformation which he describes as "veins gone wild and mixed together in strange ways") easily picks himself out as the "monster" with the distorted face in The Elephant Man. He jokes that he belongs to "a gang of libation disfigured guys in show biz - Frankenstein, Quasimodo and the Phantom of the Opera" and adds "but I'm such a loveable guy!" Frazee, who has no physical mobility (she gets around in a head-supported mechanized wheelchair) and requires abiding care from her partner, Patricia Seeley, (Frazee jokes that Seeley "jumped a helpless cripple"), points out that she has a genetic deficiency on chromosome 5. She has far outlived her predicted life expectancy. She and Klein see themselves portrayed as Clara, "the poor crippled daughter" in Heidi and laugh when Heidi (Shirley Temple) tells Clara that she will walk again and that all she has to do is "attempt difficult." McMurchy, who ended up with a "disrepair neck" at the historic period of 21 and became a quadriplegic when he dove off a pier and hit the bottom of Lake Wabanum only outside of Edmonton in 1977 on his way to Halifax to attend the Nova Scotia Schoolhouse of Fine art and Design, comes across in Klein'south words as "such a private guy." He recognizes similarities of himself in his early stages of incapacitation in the character of the paralysed Klingon in Star Trek: The Next Generation - Ethics, especially when the Klingon declares, "I will non live a life of pity or shame; my life is over." Blackridge, who did non talk until she was 3-years-old and calls herself a "learning disabled crazy chick," grew upwardly with a father who lived by the theory that, if he hit her enough, she would showtime being normal. In 1998, she and Klein collaborated on a book, Deadening Dance: A Story of Stroke, Love and Disability. Blackridge sees herself every bit Babe Jane (played past Bette Davis), "the psycho jealous sis and cheerful sufferer with the invisible disability" in What Happened to Infant Jane? The grouping ends the game with the decision that it is fourth dimension to nowadays their ain "authentic" images at the KickstART Festival which McMurchy is organizing. Blackridge offers to put together a mixed media portrait of them all using photos and "objects of meaning" belonging to each artist. I of her creations, a grouping diorama which is featured on the cover of the DVD, definitely triggers marvel and certainly gives the film "view me" appeal.
The master thrust and ability of this film revolves around the artists' individual stories which speak volumes well-nigh their spirit, warmth, sincerity and genuineness. The camera follows Klein as she visits each creative person in his or her dwelling, studio, cottage or place where their souls seem to thrive. Equally she looks through their photo albums and watches some of their video clips, what comes across is her inviting, relaxed and natural conversational manner, which, when combined with her infectious humour, puts both artists and viewers at ease. With Roche, Frazee, McMurchy, Blackridge and Kline speaking freely, openly and frankly, Klein challenges viewers to redefine their perceptions of inability. As the terminal scene captures the group hamming-it-up in a celebratory photo, a tearful Klein looks into the photographic camera and speaks from the heart, saying that information technology took her a long time to go over her loss of identity when she had her strokes. "Filmmaking was a huge role of my identity," she tells viewers. "That's who I was." Well, with Shameless Klein is dorsum! And regardless of being in a wheelchair, she has come full circumvolve to attain her goal of wanting people to empathize that "Bonnie Klein the filmmaker is nonetheless Bonnie Klein the filmmaker."
Technically, in that location are several reasons why this well-paced film works. First of all, it's in your face up. Most of the photographic camera shots are close ups; the artists look viewers in the eye and seem to be saying, "I am a person; look at me, not my disability." Secondly, the camera hides nothing. Viewers see McMurchy experiencing tremors in his legs. They watch as Klein trips on her walker, loses her residual and falls to the floor. Blackridge, who says she hated herself and still suffers from depression, shows her numerous arm scars, the result of self-inflicted mutilation with a pocketknife. Roche takes out his dentures, lets his majestic tongue hang out and does a disarming impersonation of Igor (the demented hunch-back in Frankenstein films). The viewer is forepart and middle when paramedics rush to a very sick Frazee's bedside and watch as she is placed in a special lift and taken to hospital and is seemingly hooked upward to every tube imaginable. The camera also captures some very tender moments, in item: footage of dancer Kelly Smith in a wheelchair, moving gracefully and beautifully to McMurchy's choreographed piece, "Wingspan Solo"; Frazee and her partner Patricia relaxing in a bubble bath with candlelight and wine; Klein and her husband Michael paddling their canoe at sunset and Marlena Blavin, a massage therapist, who was start attracted to Roche's sexy voice, professing her love for him ("he was too hard to resist") after being married to someone else for 17 years. The background music (cello, harp, piano, bass) is subtle and effectively emulates the sentiments of the artists. Throughout the film, there is the playful snake-charming audio of a solitary clarinet that rises, falls and sways to the mood of the movie.
At that place is a lot to digest in Shameless. Thought-provoking, it is an eye-opener of a motion picture that may shock viewers at times and may as well cause some to feel uncomfortable. Yet, as Klein and her collaborating artists intended, the moving-picture show will become people thinking about inability "equally a valued human condition that contradicts everything we're taught and that we fear." This is a "must see" documentary that should exist in all public, high school and university libraries. A valuable resource with broad-spread appeal, Shameless certainly would pique, arouse and stimulate involvement and give-and-take amidst students, educators and professionals involved in areas of disability studies, family studies, women'south studies, rehabilitative medicine, ideals (the artists talk well-nigh euthanasia and refer to the highly publicized Tracy Latimer case in Saskatchewan), psychology, the arts and special education.
Highly Recommended.
Lois Brymer is a graduate of the University of British Columbia's Master of Arts in Children's Literature Program, a W Vancouver Memorial Library volunteer and a sometime publicist/public relations practitioner.
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