By Joanne Ostrow, Denver Post film critic:

The format is as old as show business: Hey, kids, let’s put on a show. Watch behind- the-scenes drama and the tedium and hard work of rehearsals as a theatrical production takes shape.

This time, however, let’s do it with children who can’t stand still or make eye contact.

“Autism: The Musical,” a moving and uplifting documentary that’s as surprising as its title, chronicles the making of that show.

The wonderfully inspiring film premieres at 6 p.m. Tuesday (Mountain Time) on HBO, having already won a slew of film festival awards. Record it. Find it on demand. Rent it or borrow it.

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Carrie Rickey, film critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer, praises the documentary Praying with Lior as “poignant and profound.” Lior Liebling, its star, is Philadelphia’s “most radiant movie star.”

She concludes:

… Lior is an agent both of social and spiritual change.

Bring tissues.

Earlier posts here and here and here. In limited release.

From the Washington Post:

‘Blindsight,‘ directed by Lucy Walker, documents the efforts of an educator and a mountaineer, both blind, to lead six blind Tibetan teenagers up Lhakpa Ri, the 23,000-foot neighbor of Mount Everest. Walker teamed with American mountaineer Erik Weihenmayer, the first and only sightless climber to scale Mount Everest.

The young people have been ostracized in their native Tibet, where blindness is seen as a punishment for sins of past lives. Tenberken is the founder of the educational program Braille Without Borders.

Combating ’shame’ of blindness by David Hiltbrand in the Philadephia Inquirer:

Sabriye Tenberken has experienced firsthand the prejudice that blind people are subjected to in her adopted homeland of Tibet. She has heard the curses directed at students from her training center, Braille Without Borders, when they venture out on the streets of Lhasa.

This shocking treatment stems in part from ignorance and in part from religious beliefs in this Buddhist country.

There is a remarkable scene in the new documentary Blindsight, capturing the attempt of six of Tenberken’s blind students to scale a 23,000-foot peak in the Himalayas, that shows a Tibetan boy musing about the crimes he must have committed in a previous life to have earned the terrible karma of blindness.

But according to Tenberken, who went blind at 12, she encounters discrimination in Europe and the United States that is just as distressing, even if it is more subtle.

From the [UK] Guardian, criticism of Bafta’s cancellation of ‘Last American Freak Show’ screening

Mat Fraser, an actor with disabilities, takes the British film academy to task for cancelling the screening of a documentary made by and about people with disabilities. In explaining the cancellation, a Bafta manager said “Last American Freak Show” made her feel “uncomfortable.” That’s just the point, says Fraser: films need to accept “the need to stare and ask questions about disabled people, instead of the pretense of PC’s awful politeness.”

Heaven forbid that anyone should be made to feel uncomfortable by a film about disability made by a disabled person … OK, no more bitter crip anger, but come on! We wouldn’t put up with a white or straight person’s reacting fearfully to a black or gay film-maker’s viewpoint …

Fraser is the writer of “Thalidomide!! A Musical” and “Born Freak.” He describes himself as an actor, poet, musician, writer and “thalidomide ninja.”

Richard Butchins, director of “Last American Freak Show” responds to the cancellation on his Guardian Unlimited blog:

Now, I know it presents an unusual version of disability, showing people deliberately displaying their deformity in a challenging and confrontational way, but it’s also a road trip that a rather unlikely group of protagonists take along America’s west coast, performing and carousing as they go.

… The whole debacle shows how little thought and care is given to disability either by the film and TV industry or by society in general.

Coverage of the London International Disability Film Festival in the Guardian here.

See an earlier post here about staring: Why do we stare? Man without legs attempts to find out

Faces backlash
From the [UK] Independent, [UK] Guardian and the [London] Times:

The British film academy has been accused of discrimination after refusing to screen a documentary about disability for its members at an official event.

The organizers of X’08, Europe’s largest disability film festival, had selected a film about a troupe of disabled performers that was shot by a director who has a paralyzed arm. But they were told that a Hollywood comedy about a mentally ill man’s love for a mail-order sex doll (“Lars and the Real Girl”) would be a more suitable choice for the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. The joint event has now been cancelled. (more…)

“Praying with Lior” opens soon in Los Angeles, prompting the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles to produce a special issue on people with disabilities. The film, a documentary about the bar mitzvah of a young man with Down syndrome, has sparked a broad conversation about the role of people with disabilities within the Jewish community.

Included in the special issue are two cover essays on “The journey to inclusion” by parents of children with Down syndrome:

• “Seeing differences in our children poses cultural challenges,” William Kolbrener; and
• “Our family’s journey to make sure our special son was included,” by Rony Rosenbaum

Also featured are a story about a basketball program for people with disabilities, a review of Lior, and a guide to area resources with a video about a theater project for people with autism.

Schuyler’s Monster: A Father’s Journey with His Wordless Daughter, by Robert Rummel-Hudson. Due out next week.

Rummel-Hudson’s daughter Schuyler was diagnosed at the age of 18 months with a rare neurological disorder that prevents her from being able to speak unassisted. This book chronicles his efforts to become the father his daughter needs. From the author’s “letter to readers”:

“… I wrote Schuyler’s Monster for the same reason that I have done just about anything of worth over the past seven years. Schuyler deserves a voice. She deserves to be heard, and the story of her fight against her invisible monster is the most inspiring one that I have known. That it has fallen to me to be the one to share it with you is the happiest accident of my life.

“This memoir exists in part so that you can know that such a little girl ever existed. When you read this book, it is my hope that perhaps, against all logic and in defiance of most parents’ secret desire for the “perfect” child, you might just envy my place in her world a little.”

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Road Map to Holland: How I found my way through my son’s first two years with Down syndrome, by Jennifer Graf Groneberg. Due out in April. A nuanced and beautifully written account of one mother’s journey of discovery. From the book jacket:

“… a story of the love between a mother and her son — the child she didn’t know she wanted, the child she always needed.”

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