This year's "Projections" Film Forum features a diverse range of feature films, documentaries and shorts written, produced, directed or starring artists with disabilities, providing a back-drop for two entertaining and empowering evenings.

Thursday, October 8th, 2009, 7:00PM

Carts of Darkness
Directed by Murray Siple
In the picture-postcard community of North Vancouver, filmmaker Murray Siple follows men who have turned bottle-picking, their primary source of income, into the extreme sport of shopping cart racing. Enduring hardships from everyday life on the streets of Vancouver, this sub-culture depicts street life as much more than stereotypes portrayed in mainstream media. The films takes a deep look into the lives of the men who race carts, the adversity they face, and the appeal of cart racing despite the risk.

I Go Backwards
Directed by Tony Diamanti
I Go Backwards is a short film about a man with severe Cerebral Palsy who also cannot speak words, and how he travels around his community in an unconventional way in his wheelchair. Take a walk with him, and see the barriers he faces, the reactions of others, and his will to push on despite those barriers and reactions of an unaware, and often closed minded society. Meet Tony, and hear his thoughts as he pushes backwards in his chair through his neighbourhood. He chooses to move backwards, but you may ask the question, “is he really going backwards? Or is he moving forwards?”

Question and answer session with directors Murray Siple and Tony Diamanti, will follow the screening. A free, non-alcholic reception will follow.

Saturday, October 10th, 2009, 7:00PM

The Last Flight
Written, produced and directed by Yves Langlois
Meet Claude Messier, an author and handicapped person. He became a defender of the therapeutic use of cannabis. He was devoted to the rights of the disabled. He denounced their being treated like children, and defended their rights to have “normal” lives. He wrote several books which promote empowerment and creativity for the disabled. Ski, dog sleigh, underwater diving, even parachute, nothing stops him. This isn’t a film of voyeurism, pity or mockery, but a portrait of a man who lived fully and pushed the limits when most of us would have been stymied.

Necessity
Directed by Sophie Hyde, co-directed and choreographed by Tuula Roppola, produced by Closer Productions and the Restless Dance Theatre
An urgent game between two girls eternally bound together. They trace their lives onto the walls of their room and try to get below the surface. Two people in a domestic space reveal the depths and limitations of their relationship through a seemingly perpetual game of gesture, movement, drawing, and confession. The sun shifts through foliage outside the window as surfaces of bodies and the physical space are mapped and manipulated in a desperate effort to find the depths of what is shared. They play with each other’s bodies, moving them, drawing on their skin and the walls, pulling and grappling each other in frustration, need, and tenderness.

White Sound
Produced and directed by Sarah Tracton
Visualised through deaf and hearing impaired observance, White Sound explores the notion of a soundless existence. Rania lip-reads conversations in a nightclub, while Phillip feels sound beneath the floor. White Sound is a space where noise, silence and imagination converge.

Question and answer session with Yves Langlois, director of The Last Flight, will follow the screening. A free, non-alcholic reception will follow.

Photographer: Rudy Ens		Photographer: Rudy Ens
Photographer: Rudy Ens		Photographer: Rudy Ens
Photographer: Rudy Ens		Photographer: Rudy Ens