Reviewing ReelAbilities Film Festival

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Monday, 07 February 2011 05:00

Written by Marion DS Dreyfus

ReelAbilities Film Festival
Manhattan, February 2011

For most of the history of cinema, and of course film festivals—“a latter-day development that is  now a thriving boom industry throughout the country and even the globe”—the agora of offerings devolved on particular stars (John Wayne, Steven Seagal, Elvis) or stables of bankable luminati, on origin/location (Sundance, Lincoln Center, ‘Bollywood,’ Cannes), genre (Sci-Fi, horror, indie, Western, noir, Geek, nouvelle vague) or some combinatorial outlier (teen, rom-com, chick-lit [grrr], kiddie, cartoon, underground, even the dopey script, ultra-cheapo mumblecore).

The performers in these festivals were almost uniformly genetically unmatched, exorbitantly beautiful, and fully physically abled.

After 100 years of film and counting, the Jewish Community Centers, better known as simply the JCC, has focused on the truly underserved: Special needs programming.

In a roster of outstanding films in Spanish, English, Hebrew, Chinese and French, the JCC serves up feature-length dramas, comedies and documentaries about topics most people have never seen in film before. Audiences throughout the festival were SRO as the spectrum of disability or differently abled (the current favorite, from all appearances, in nomenclature for this evolving field) covered the hardships and potential triumphs of Down Syndrome, autism, traumatic head injury, wounded warriors, the clinically depressed, wheelchair-bound (either congenital or acquired from injury), the visually impaired/blind. One-on-one Q-and-A after each film added substantially to the value accorded by the films, with extraordinary guests in some instances, such as the Downs star of the remarkable and important Argentinian film, Anita.

A new insight directly attributable to these authentic films is that the non-actor actors of these stories are remarkably funnier and easier to view than the earnest over-emoting of the astronomically remunerated L.A. hyper-performers we are used to from the  entertainment-churn in silicon valley. A comedian with cerebral palsy who visits North Korea under false pretenses—The Red Chapel—is far more incisive and scathing in his criticism than a dozen pompous Michael Moores. A raised eyebrow by the protagonist of Yo, Tambien (the first college graduate Down Syndrome in all of Europe in real life) gave the audience more hilarity than a whole plethora of pratfalls by the Jim Carreys or Adam Sandlers we pay good money to see. A charming Chinese tale of a theatre for the blind, My Spectacular Theatre (we were told by the Q/A speakers, an anthropologist and director, that there is no such place, but I do recall a porn emporium in Wuhan that looked exactly like this mythical hole-in-the-wall ‘in Beijing’) imparted more gentle hilarity, and more stunning visuals, than a passel of party-hearty tales of exquisitely handsome and hour-glassine teen-agers (again) going amok and amyl nitrate.

A point that is raised repeatedly, and that bears analysis in our success-oriented culture, is that somehow, we always gravitate to the ‘hero narrative.’ But not every victim of a bad hand in life is able to achieve the Paralympics pinnacle (Warrior Champions), and our gravitating toward tales of overcoming, while understandable, puts a heavy burden on those struggling in darkness who cannot simply overcome the despair or pain.

Most of all, aside from the poignant climbs back to stability and serenity, often-gorgeous photography, remarkable triumphs, painful recognitions of our own weaknesses and occasional self-pitying modes, was the absolute knowledge that for all the vicissitudes we suffer, financial setbacks, daily assaults and workaday trauma we encounter, for the vast majority of us, our lives are infinitely easier than for every single person with these ailments, afflictions and lifetime wounds.

For its part in gathering these exemplary topics and films, many of which films necessitated enormous effort to get hold of and screen for a general public, the JCC is owed a large debt of gratitude on the part of its growing audience.

At the JCC Manhattan, February 3-8.

Marion DS Dreyfus
©2011

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