Mary & Max is a clay-mation feature film from the creators of the Academy Award-winning short animation Harvie Krumpet. A tale of pen-friendship between two very different people; Mary Dinkle, a chubby lonely eight year old girl living in the suburbs of Melbourne, and Max Horovitz, a 44 year old, obese, Jewish man with Aspergers Syndrome living in the chaos of New York. Spanning 20 years and 2 continents, Mary and Max’s friendship survives much more than the average diet of life’s ups and downs. Like Harvie Krumpet, Mary & Max is innocent but not naive, as it takes us on a journey that explores friendship, autism, taxidermy, psychiatry, alcoholism, where babies come from, obesity, kleptomania, sexual difference, trust, copulating dogs, religious difference, agoraphobia and much, much more.
Based on real-life events that took place in the late nineteenth century, Marie’s Story follows the story of a deaf and blind fourteen-year-old girl who can’t communicate with the outside world. Despite the advice of a doctor who believes she is ‘dumb,’ Marie’s father, a humble artisan, cannot bring himself to commit her to an asylum. Out of despair, he takes her to the Larnay Institute near Poitiers where nuns take care of young deaf women. Her Mother Superior’s skepticism notwithstanding, Sister Marguerite, a young nun, takes Marie under her wing and does everything she can to bring her to open up to her surroundings.
A coming-of-age drama about a family that struggles to keep up appearances while hiding their sins from one another. When the eldest son, who has autism, returns from an institution, the pressure builds and secrets begin to emerge.
1 in 7 of us will experience some kind of deafness in our lifetime. So what would happen to the music you love, if your hearing was lost? Made by a partially deaf filmmaker after the future of her own hearing was called into doubt, Lost and Sound is a moving and fascinating documentary that follows music critic Nick Coleman, dancer Emily Thornton and pianist Holly Loach over 2 years, as they journey deep into sound and silence to rediscover music after deafness. The film weaves its way through a startling world of altered sound. It combines intimate filming with original animation, a rich musical soundtrack (often manipulated to reveal what deafness actually sounds like), and new insights from the world’s top neuroscientists, to tell the story of the great human love affair with music. Featuring: New York Times bestseller Dr David Eagleman, composer Professor Nigel Osborne, Dr Katie Overy, Professor David Huron, Dr Robert Zatorre and science writer Philip Ball.
Elaborate digital platforms like Second Life and World of Warcraft offer novel opportunities for friendship, sex, employment, and aesthetic experience in virtual communities populated by cartoon-like avatars. Centered around people who have found communities online, Login 2 Life profiles people deeply immersed in virtual worlds, including individuals who are homebound because of their disabilities, and attempts to understand what these individuals get from their virtual lives.
Albert loves life, and he won’t let anything get in his way, least of all his wheelchair. He’s only 19, but he’s already traveled to dozens of countries. He’s made a sport of leaving with only 20 euros in his pocket and putting his faith in the innate goodness of people he meets along the way. And he has plenty of other tricks up his sleeve to get into places free of charge if he needs to. This time, his destination is as far away as possible from his home in Barcelona: a lighthouse in New Zealand. For the first time, he will not be alone, because his girlfriend Anna will be joining him. It’s impossible to hitchhike with a camera team in your wake, so they decide to film their adventures themselves. They experience plenty of amazing stuff, but sometimes things get tough, especially for Anna, who can’t always keep up with Albert. They have agreed that the filmmakers will join them in New Zealand for the last part of their trip. Through interviews with his grandmother, stepmother and father, we discover that this irrepressibly optimistic young man had a pretty tough time as a boy. He and his father have dealt with his problem in a remarkable way. With animations in the background, Anna’s parents and various members of Albert’s family explain why they let them go on this journey.
Chen Yu, a hawker of pirated DVDs, finds refuge and then employment in a Beijing movie theater for the blind. As his relationship to the blind community deepens, he finds love, acceptance, and heartbreak in this beautifully-shot ode to the power of cinema.
(English Dubs Available)
A romantic tale about two New Yorkers, Armando from the Bronx and Mia from the East Side, and their love of ballroom dancing. Mia is a vivacious professional dancer but a tragic accident forever changes her life. True to his heart, Armando dedicates himself, along with a group of colorful misfits, to help Mia deal with her challenges and dance once more
A cinematic road trip follows a deaf couple and their young nephew on their way to Tehran. Before they get there, the couple must break the bad news to the boy that his parents were killed in an accident, but the journey proves to be more complex than they even expected.
