NEW DOCUMENTARY SPOTLIGHTS INVISIBLE DISABILITY

Documentary explores the life challenges faced by brain injury “survivors”

This month sees the release of a documentary highlighting the lives of brain injury survivors. Brain injury is often considered a “hidden disability” as the cognitive and other impairments caused by an injury to the brain may have no outward visible signs.

“Because brain injury is invisible, a lot of the time it doesn’t get properly diagnosed, sometimes people think people afflicted with this injury are faking it—or making things up”, says the documentary’s co-director Rick Franklin, himself a fifteen year survivor of brain injury.

For Rochester residents interested in seeing this 52-minute documentary, it will be screening in Toronto on Sunday September 28, 2008 @2:45pm, at the Rainbow Cinema (Market Square) as part of the COMMFFEST (Global) Community Film Festival (http://www.commffest.com/home.html). Or, for information about how you can arrange a screening “Brain Injury Dialogues” in your community contact: info@braininjurydialogues.org

Brain Injury Dialogues focuses on the lives of five brain injury survivors living in California: these survivors discuss their deficits and the social and economic challenges they face. “One thing I have learnt about brain injury—two injuries are the same”, says Franklin.

As a result of his injury, Franklin suffers from constant fatigue and is prone to “distractability” in noise or movement filled environments. He has been unable to work since his injury, and describes the pressures of working on a documentary video as “challenging beyond belief”. “We hope the documentary will screen at disability film festivals around the country—we also hope people will use it in their communities to increase awareness about this type of disability”, he adds.

“In this documentary we hear about the lives of survivors in their own voices, we didn’t set out to make a medical documentary about this disability, we wanted to make sure survivors themselves are able to be heard”, says the documentaries second co-director Lyell Davies.

“There are a lot of brain injury support groups around the country, and we would like to see them screening this video—thereby allowing survivors to see themselves in a positive, realistic and empowering way”, he adds.