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The Second Annual Reelabilities: NY Disabilities Film Festival is dedicated to promoting awareness and appreciation of the lives, stories and artistic expressions of people with different abilities. The festival presents award winning films in various locations throughout the NY metropolitan area. Discussions and other engaging programs will bring together the community to explore, discuss and celebrate the diversity of our shared human experience. An acting troupe puts on major productions for actors with disabilities. By Danielle Shaw It’s a rainy Sunday afternoon, and the theater is packed. A young girl using a walker and dressed as Dorothy Gayle emerges through the curtains. She speaks to her dog Toto and then begins a serene “Over the Rainbow.” As she finishes singing, she is drowned out by the audience’s enthusiastic applause. Later the audience notices that the Tin Man and Scarecrow have visual impairments, and the Lion uses a wheelchair. In fact, all of the young actors seem to have some kind [...] Clay Cotton made his living at the piano from the 1960s to the 1990s. After contracting MS, he switched to mastering a whole other keyboard. by Rebecca Kellogg Clay Cotton was an in-demand piano man. At the height of his musical career, he played as a talented side man for musicians including Eric Clapton, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Jerry Garcia, and B.B. King. That all changed after he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS). Eventually his hands could no longer play the notes that had earned him his livelihood and he was forced to find another line of work. He and his [...] Toby Forrest fronts hard-rocking band Cityzen in his wheelchair. By Rebecca Kellogg It is a chilly March night on Santa Monica Pier. Even in darkness, anglers huddle by baited lines at pier’s end. Beyond them the famous Pacific Wheel spins steadily, brightening the night with a light show visible for miles up the Pacific Coast Highway. Near the mouth of the pier, at Rusty’s restaurant, a battle of the bands is underway. The bar is full, and so are most of Rusty’s tables. Decked out with an ocean theme, Rusty’s sports surfboards on walls alongside surf movie posters. The tables are draped [...] FILM TALK | by Marjorie Cohen Warm Springs (2007). An HBO production. Directed by Joseph Sargent. With Kenneth Branagh, Cynthia Nixon, David Paymer, Kathy Bates, and Jane Alexander. Screenplay by Margaret Nagle. Warm Springs, a docudrama made for HBO, examines the qualities Franklin Delano Roosevelt acquired during his stay—rather, his journey—at Warm Springs, Georgia. It’s a journey that enabled him to become a president with the common touch, a true man of the people, and, perhaps, most important, a man of empathy. Of course being a dramatization, the film often plays fast and loose with the [...] Essayist Gary Presley has just published a memoir about (among other things) living with post-polio syndrome. By Rebecca Kellogg Gary Presley was 17 when he was diagnosed with polio after being inoculated with the Salk vaccine in 1959. Unaware of the future, he took the last steps of his life wearing his favorite cowboy boots. In the ensuing years, Presley faced his own limitations and the limitations of the way the world works. He has dealt with post- polio syndrome, worked in the insurance industry, and married. Mining his experiences for meaning, Presley has crafted rich essays and the [...] Over 1200 moviegoers attended the three-day RealAbilities New York Disabilities Film Festival. United Spinal was a supporting partner in this exciting [...] We received this request for help from veterans from a filmmaker at New York University: By Marjorie Cohen FDR–American Experience. PBS 2007. Filmed and Written by David Grubin. It was the summer of 1921 when Franklin Roosevelt, former undersecretary of the Navy and rising star in the Democratic Party, was stricken. He had visited a boy’s summer camp and left with a strange virus that rendered his legs useless to him. He was finally diagnosed with polio or as it was then called, Infantile Paralysis. It appeared that Roosevelt’s political career was truly finished. In the 1920s, polio, if not a death sentence, was a scourge on the populace. “Nice families kept their disabled children in a back [...] A psychological thriller explores the subculture of people who “wannabe” disabled. By Amy Meisner Threet, MSW Quid Pro Quo, a new film that opens in select cities this summer, explores a dark side of the disabled world. It’s not a true story, exactly, but it’s not totally fiction, either. In writer-director Carlos Brooks’ debut feature, the fetish world of “wannabes” is exposed. These are non-disabled people who are obsessed with disability to the point, in extreme cases, where they look on the internet for surgeons to perform elective amputations. Less severe physically, yet as injurious psychologically, perhaps, are those who choose to [...] Book Review: The Autoimmune Epidemic. “It is the kind of book that will scare you. It will make you [...] The AXIS Dance Company inspires in more ways than one. Text and Photos by Alice Faye Love Margaret Cromwell, Alice Sheppard, Lisa Bufano and Rodney Bell of San Francisco’s AXIS Dance Company perform at a public school in Birmingham, Alabama. Many a dance performance has left me scratching my head wondering what just happened. Even having spent over 25 years as a technician for live performance, I still suffer from these moments. But that’s okay. Modern dance, for me, promotes thinking about what I just saw and digging a little deeper into myself to “get it.” AXIS Dance [...] By Amy Meisner Threet When she was 9 months old, just starting to walk, and living in Caracas, Venezuela, Marla De Fex developed a fever that an American doctor informed her parents was poliomyelitis. At the age of one her father took her to Rusk Institute in New York City. Her father continued to take her there for treatment twice a year until the family relocated to the U.S. and settled in Flushing, Queens. The middle child between two sisters, neither of whom has a physical disability, De Fex says, “I didn’t realize I was disabled until I was 9 years old and [...] Eating and Healing: Traditional Food As Medicine Edited by Andrea Pieroni and Lisa Leimer Price Haworth Press, Binghamton, New York. Softcover, 406 pages. Reviewed by Gil C. Allen, MA, MS, PhD, DC Eating and Healing:Traditional Food As Medicine is a compilation of articles written by various agricultural researchers who have descended on little known human cultural groups in different parts of the world to determine their indigenous knowledge of foods, plants and herbs used for sustenance and medicinal purposes. The book included charts of plants by botanical name and their uses in society, some black and white pictures of [...] As persons who have had to adapt to a disability, we may have had to reinvent ourselves. Many of us may, in the process, have found hidden talents we didn’t know we possessed. Luckily, the creative process knows no barriers and is only enriched by our individual experiences. In my own life, I am grateful for the opportunity to use my prior training and experience, both personal and professional, to lead this organization through its biggest growth process in its 60-year history. The challenges this poses are major, but not insurmountable. I’m fortunate to have at my disposal a dedicated staff and board [...] When, in our March issue, we asked readers of Action to send us their art, I had no idea what sort of response we would get. I certainly did not expect our invitation to elicit the amazing variety and quality of artwork we did receive. I am very grateful that the six individuals you will find represented in our gallery acted on our request. They have each, in their own unique way, elevated the visual and spiritual quality of this issue. Seattle-based artist Harriet Sanderson expresses herself on her disability by creating powerful images out of wooden canes, wheelchairs, and other unusual media. By Lori A. Wood “When I was three, I was on the couch taking a nap, and when I woke up, I was feverish and couldn’t move my right arm,” says Harriet Sanderson, an artist who lives in Seattle now, but who grew up in her native Indiana. “My parents took me to the hospital. That’s really all I remember.” The little girl was diagnosed with polio. “It was 1950,” Sanderson says. “Most of the people I know who had polio were [...] Bill Lasher’s wheelchairs are stunning works of art. Bill Lasher’s “Chopper Chair” (courtesy of Lasher Sport) Bill Lasher Jr. makes beautiful custom wheelchairs for his company Lasher Sport (www.lashersport.com) out of a warehouse in Anchorage, Alaska. A United Spinal member, and longtime Alaska resident, Lasher became paralyzed during a skiing accident when he was in high school. Here he talks about how he came to make these unusual creations, and what his vision is as he makes them. The first time I pondered creating a chair, I was in my first year as an engineering student at Arizona State University [...] It took an injury for Kitty Lunn to return to her beloved dance By Linda A. Cronin “The dancer inside me doesn’t care about the wheelchair,” says Kitty Lunn, artistic director of Infinity Dance Theater. “She just wanted to keep dancing.” (Photo by Dan Demetriad) Kitty Lunn always wanted to be a ballet dancer. For years, she lived her dream, successfully pursuing a career in dance. At 15 she danced the role of Swanilda in Coppélia with the New Orleans Civic Ballet and later was a soloist with the Washington Ballet. Lunn danced in such ballets [...] |
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