Slamdance Film Festival has often looked to distinguish itself by providing an outlet for filmmakers who see the world a bit differently. One of the ways it does that is through the “Unstoppable” sections, both for feature films and shorts. These films are made by or about people with disabilities (whether visible or not). Here are a couple of films from the Unstoppable Features section.
Daruma, directed by Alexander Yellen. Partick is wheelchair bound and very bitter. He is irresponsible. He feels entitled to pity, but disdains it. (He pities himself more than he needs.) He doesn’t get along with anyone. He is just an all-around asshole. But Child Services show up at his house to tell him his has a four year old daughter from a fling he’s forgotten about. The girl’s mother has died and wants Patrick to raise their daughter. He only agrees because it will provide him money.
It doesn’t take long for him to make a mess of things. He enlists neighbor Robert (who can’t stand Patrick) who has lost both arms, to drive him and the daughter across the country to leave her with her maternal grandparents. During that trip there is bonding that happens, but even so, Patrick has a lot of work to do to make himself into a better person before he can be what his daughter needs. The message of the film grows out of the discovery that Patrick’s real disability is not in his body, but in his soul.
The film requires some suspension of belief that any child welfare organization would agree to leave a child with Patrick, or that any woman would ever want to put up with him. The film does perhaps too good of a job of making him unlikeable. It makes us hard to buy into his chance at redemption.
Good Bad Things, directed by Shane D. Stanger. Danny is a young man with muscular dystrophy. He and his best friend/roommate have a small ad agency that wants to work with a large dating app company. Danny is not a user, but signs up in order to do some research on the app. Amazingly he not only finds a match in Madi, but finds someone who seems to be as in to him as he is with her.
Madi is a photographer, and one weekend she takes a set of intimacy pictures of Danny. When she gets a chance to put those photos in a show, their relationship will be challenged. Each sees the other as using them or not really caring for them for themselves. Danny discovers there he has to free himself of the sense that he can’t be normal and loved. Madi must free herself from the fear of loving too much.
In many ways this is your basic romance movie. The problem over the photos is really just an excuse for the two characters to discuss the way each has found ways of walling off parts of their lives. One of the hardest parts of love is letting people beyond those walls.
