Looking at Disability in NOBODY’S PERFECT
intern
Don’t look away. That’s the message of Niko von Glasow’s documentary, NoBody’s Perfect, which won the “German Oscar” for best documentary in 2009. In the film, Von Glasow assembles a group of middle-aged adults, who, like him, were all born with physical abnormalities due to prenatal exposure to Thalidomide. His purpose is a calendar photo shoot. Nude.
While Von Glasow is preparing for the shoot, he visits each of his subjects at their homes. They talk casually about how they have coped with their disabilities, whether they would want normal bodies, their continuing struggle to be compensated by the German company responsible for selling the drug. We marvel at their abilities: one, confined to a wheelchair, is an astrophysicist. With arms and legs that are no more than stumps, he laughs, remembering a picture of him that someone took next to a Buddha, remarking on the physical similarity. One of the women rides horses, another has developed the use of her legs and feet for things that hands usually do. While the director confesses that he is still uncomfortable with his disability, most of his subjects seem more at ease. They have lived their lives despite the limitations imposed upon them.
A remarkable sequence near the end of the film shows the photos from the calendar blown up and displayed in public. Able-bodied people walk through the space and we see their reactions. Many are visibly uncomfortable. Others declare their support for what they see: a group of people asking to be accepted for who they are.
by Mattie Akers
No Comments
|
| Posted on August 25, 2010
Comments