From the New York Times, a review by Andy Webster of “Heavy Load,” a documentary about a British garage-punk band that is composed mainly of people with learning disabilities. The film doesn’t specify the nature of the disabilities, Webster says, but one band member has Down syndrome.

Depicted in the film is the band’s Stay up Late Campaign, which encourages people with disabilities to challenge the curfew system so they can choose the lives they want to be living.

An opening intertitle announces “A film about happiness.” Oh, please. It’s about struggle, the efforts of an ensemble wrestling with artistic obstacles as well as biological ones. It’s also a portrait of British band life: playing in smoky pubs and studios and at outdoor concerts and hustling tracks to a music publisher. And it is a portrait of a nation with social services and a public so compassionate it makes our own look heartless.

Other reviews:

(more…)

From the Boston Globe:

An exhibit of photographs by students with special needs demonstrates “striking range.” The collection of 16 images by students in the LABBB Collaborative Program is on view at the Lexington High School Gallery in Lexington, Mass.

… each reveals a unique point of view from a group of young people who may look at the world a bit differently.

… Photo instructors Theresa LeBlanc, a vocational counselor and transition specialist, and Betsy Kidder, an occupational therapist, helped the students learn to use the cameras and encouraged them to use their imagination in snapping pictures.

Teachers say photography provides a good educational tool, spurring students to express their creativity and providing opportunities for making connections with others.

The students’ website is here.

(Above, photo of seats at Fenway Park by student Gregory Begin.)

From the American Chronicle:

Tracy Ashton has a recurring comic role on NBC’s “My Name is Earl” as Didi, the one-legged girl. Ashton is a former cancer patient whose leg was amputated. She says she would like to see more roles for performers with disabilities in Hollywood, and a greater emphasis on getting people with actual disabilities to portray characters both with and without disabilities.

On National Public Radio’s Talk of the Nation, photographer Kevin Connolly is interviewed. Connolly was born without legs, and has traveled the world taking photos of people looking at him. He concludes that people are trying to construct their own narratives to explain his unusual appearance, and often mistake him for a beggar, a holy man or a war veteran. One little girl demanded to know whether his appearance was “a trick.”

Said one caller:

I want to honor the inspiration that you’re bringing to this subject, making it open and inviting people to explore their own biases and how they see others and themselves

Connolly sums up his collection, The Rolling Exhibition, as “15 countries, 31 cities, 32,000 photos and one stare.” It is being displayed at the Kennedy Center. Earlier post here.

From Polskie Radio, Poland’s radio network:

Frederic Chopin, widely regarded as Poland’s greatest composer, died of complications of cystic fibrosis, according to Professor Wojciech Cichy of the Medical University in Poznan. Reports at the time of Chopin’s death in 1849 had attributed his death to tuberculosis.

As evidence, Prof. Cichy points to the presence of nodules on the surface of the composer’s heart, cited in the autopsy report, as well as the medical history of members of Chopin’s immediate family. Two of his three sisters died of lung diseases, the youngest at the age of 15. Chopin died at age 39 .

Cystic fibrosis is a hereditary condition that was not recognized until the 1930s, long after the composer’s death. Prof. Cichy says he hopes to be able to carry out further genetic research on the basis of material taken from the remains of Emilia Chopin, Frederic’s sister.

A review article in the Journal of Applied Genetics in 2003 concluded that CF was a “probable cause” of Chopin’s death. The authors called for more research on the subject:

Is it justifiable to deepen our knowledge about the great Polish composer, but foremost to give hope and meaning to those who nowadays suffer from genetically inherited disorders? Is it not right to make an attempt to prove to many suffering people that many things count in life much more than a weak physical body, and that they are not predestined to vanish without leaving something that will influence, inspire and enrich the generations to come?

From the [Nashville] Tennessean:

“The Artists’ Voice,” an exhibit in Nashville’s Frist Center for the Visual Art, showcases 54 artists who live with some form of disability. (Painting at left by Ann Ambrose.)

It would be a mistake, however, to define these artists solely in terms of their disability — which is, after all, intrinsic to the human condition.

“All of us have disabilities. It’s just that some of us are not recognized in a professional manner as having a disability,” says Lori Kissinger, executive director of VSA arts Tennessee, which provides art and art education opportunities for the state’s disabled population.

… Confronting our own limitations is difficult enough, Kissinger observes, and it’s for this reason that we have much to learn from the artists in The Artist’s Voice.

“What they believe is more important than the challenges they face. Through their art, they speak to their disabilities, whether that be feelings of frustration or joy or freedom.”

From the Wall Street Journal:

New York’s Museum of Modern Art conducts tours for people with visual impairments, encouraging them to don disposable gloves and explore selected works. The tours have been going on for 35 years. Other museums offering similar programs include Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, the Art Institute of Chicago and New York’s Lower East Side Tenement Museum.

“I’ve had people say ‘how can you give tours to the blind?” said [lecturer Richard] Turnbull, who in addition to his chores at MoMA is chairman of the art history department at the Fashion Institute of Technology. “They don’t understand it’s possible to appreciate art in ways that are not entirely visual. People who actually can see a work don’t see it the same way another sighted person does, so in a lot of ways this program is all about the plurality of experience that people have with works of art.”