Boston Herald columnist Lauren Beckham Falcone on HBO’s documentary about a young married couple with Down syndrome:

“Monica & David” is more than a love story; it is a reverential, nuanced movie that shows that people with developmental disabilities want the same things everyone wants out of life: Love. Work. Companionship. Independence. These things aren’t the exception. They’re the expectation.

“Monica & David” airs today on HBO.

Other coverage of the movie’s HBO premiere:

Matthew Gilbert in the Boston Globe:

Reader, I cried … Monica & David” gracefully presents the world of people with Down syndrome at a crossroads, as embodied by these two individuals and their sweet, life-affirming love.

Ellen Gray in the Philadelphia Inquirer:

If you make it through the first 10 minutes dry-eyed, you’ll want to see an ophthalmologist.

ABC News: HBO film asks provocative questions about sex, children

For couple with Down syndrome, does love conquer all?

Newsweek calls this Tribeca-award-winning documentary “a triumph” and “a refreshing and rare story for television.” It’s a chronicle of the courtship, marriage, and happily-ever-after of Monica and David, two young people who have Down syndrome.

The Washington Post calls it “a moving affair, a film that can inspire tears of joy within the first five minutes.”

At a time when characters with disabilities are almost unseen on TV, filmmaker Ali Codina provides an intimate portrait of these two as they struggle to balance their desires for independence with their need to rely on others for assistance. The pair live with family, and have not been able to find work.

Codina tells the Miami Herald that she hopes the film will help build public awareness and acceptance of people with disabilities .

“That was always my goal throughout the making of the film: To get it to the largest audience possible who may know very little about disabilities,” Codina says. “Once the viewer connects with the love story, you can start dealing with broader issues, such as addressing the fact that we don’t often acknowledge adults with disabilities as adults. We treat them as children. I also hope people who see Monica & David start to think differently about employment for the disabled. It’s a pretty tough reality in terms of what’s available for them.”

… “Monica & David is one of the greatest love stories of all time,” says Anthony K. Shriver, founder and chairman of Best Buddies. “I am also hopeful that it will be a wake-up call for all of us about the endless love, passion and ability that all individuals with intellectual disabilities possess.”

More coverage in the Denver Post. The movie’s home page is here.

Earlier post here.

From the BBC, Washington Post, Miami Herald:

Monica & David, a documentary about the romance and marriage of two young adults with Down syndrome, has won the top documentary prize at the prestigious Tribeca Film Festival.

The film was directed by the female subject’s cousin, Miami’s Alexandra Codina, and was chosen from among 30 documentaries to receive a $25,000 prize.  It is scheduled to premiere on HBO in October.

From the jury’s statement:

“Monica & David takes an incredibly intimate situation and beautifully translates it in a way that makes you think about your own life. It’s a clear and observant look at a family and the purity of love, fueled by an organic sense of the sadness, joy and everyday humor that fill this epic journey that is life.”

An excerpt from the festival’s program notes:

… an intimate, year-in-the-life portrait of two childlike spirits with adult desires as they prepare for their fairy tale wedding and face the realities of married life afterward. Taking immense pride in their new roles as husband and wife, David wants to bring home the bacon, and Monica wants to fry it in the pan. They want babies of their own. But their unique circumstances still have them living with Monica’s mother and husband. How will this unique family face its challenges and move forward?

… along with their story is one of two different mothers who sacrificed and struggled against an intolerant world to provide for their children.

The official trailer is here.

A documentary on BBC2′s “Wonderland” series, follows Emma Bishop and Ben Marshall, two young adults in England who have been together for six years and are very much in love. Both have Down syndrome.

They want to wed, but face complications from their parents and from the benefits system. “The thing with having Down syndrome is that sometimes you’re not treated like an adult,” explained Emma. “And people don’t listen to what you say.”

In the [UK] Independent, reviewer Alice-Azania Jarvis says the work is “a moving, striking and insightful film…, not to mention one, which, hopefully will work towards changing the attitudes Emma mentioned.”

Lucy Mangan, writing in the [UK] Guardian, called the documentary a “slight film” that fails to consider the broader context of “the difficulties of reconciling adult human rights with childlike vulnerabilities.” Still, she says, the film was valuable for providing “a nuanced portrait of two people leading the kind of lives rarely seen at length on the screen.”

On theAtlantic.com, journalist and filmmaker Jody Becker questions current research that has found a rising incidence of autism among American children. Becker says government eligibility standards for services may be driving the increase in diagnoses, as doctors are forced to misdiagnose kids in order to get publicly funded help for them.

“Every day, precious time and money is wasted as kids who don’t belong in the autism world get pushed into it,” she says. “Finally, parents are pushing back.”

Becker is the producer of Autistic-Like: Graham’s Story, a documentary about a California family whose son son was given a provisional diagnosis of autism and a prescription for Applied Behavioral Analysis — even though he had Sensory Processing Disorder, a milder syndrome that’s not on the autism spectrum. The family’s pediatrician told them to keep the inaccurate autism label so the state would pay for treatment.

From the Associated Press:

Of the first 36 U.S. children to die of the swine flu since it was identified in April, almost two-thirds had epilepsy, cerebral palsy or other neurodevelopmental conditions, according to a report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In a previous flu season, only a third of the children who died of the flu had comparable underlying conditions.

See also:

Ed. Dept. Gives Guidance on Providing Special Education During a Swine Flu Outbreak – Education Week blog

From New York Times, Associated Press/Greensboro [NC] News & Record, Charlotte Observer, Winston-Salem Journal, Shelby [NC] Star:

Martha Mason, author of the memoir “Breath,” died in her North Carolina home last week shortly before her 72nd birthday. Mason had lived more than 60 years in an iron lung after a childhood bout with polio left her paralyzed from the neck down.

Mason was one of the last handful of Americans to live full-time in an iron lung. An official from the March of Dimes said there was no documented case of any American who had done so for quite so long.

From her horizontal world – a 7-foot-long, 800-pound iron cylinder that encased all but her head – Ms. Mason lived a life that was by her own account fine and full, reading voraciously, graduating with highest honors from high school and college, entertaining and eventually writing.

She chose to remain in an iron lung, she often said, for the freedom it gave her. It let her breathe without tubes in her throat, incisions or hospital stays, as newer, smaller ventilators might require. It took no professional training to operate, letting her remain mistress of her own house, with just two aides assisting her.

Mary Dalton, an associate communications professor at Wake Forest University, produced a documentary about Mason’s life in 2005. “She always wanted people to see she was a person, separate from the iron lung,” she said. “Once you got engaged in a conversation with her, you forgot about the iron lung. … She was really funny, she was really smart … She never wanted to be pitied.”

(Photo from the Charlotte Observer)