ReelAbilities Film Festival enters 6th year
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
An Irish film about a touching friendship that develops between two teens with different mental health issues will kick off this year’s ReelAbilities Film Festival on Wednesday.
The sixth annual festival, presented by Film Pittsburgh, celebrates the stories of people living with different abilities. There will be four feature-length films and two short-film programs during the festival that runs through Oct. 9. All shows will be at the SouthSide Works Cinema. Several Q&As with people related to the films and/or receptions will be held after the shows.
In addition, a pop-up art exhibit, “Bird in Hand” will feature printmaking works by artists-in-residence at Creative Citizen Studios, a local organization that links the arts with disabilities communities. That will be on exhibit at 441 Cinema Drive, two doors down from SouthSide Works Cinema.
“The Drummer and the Keeper” opens the festival at 7 p.m. Wednesday and focuses on the unlikely friendship between Gabriel, a young drummer trying to keep his bipolar diagnosis in the dark, and another young boy, Christopher, who has Asperger’s syndrome and lives in an institution.
The director, Nick Kelly of Dublin, who will be on hand for a Q&A after the screening, told the Irish Examiner in September 2017 that he was inspired to make the film from his own experiences.
“My younger son is on the spectrum. I’ve had that experience and then through that, I’ve gone into the world of knowing lots and lots of people on the autism spectrum. People are very very different from each other as well.
“It’s a world that I kind of know, and in both cases you’ve got characters who are quite challenged by the rules of society. One of them doesn’t really want to fit in with society at all, and the other one would love to fit in with the rules of society, if he could be confident he knew what they were at any given moment.”
The film premiered at the Galway Film Fleadh in July 2017, where it won Best Irish First Feature, and it later won Best Feature at the Irish Film Festival London in November 2017.
This will be followed on Thursday with a Shorts Program (totaling 91 minutes) featuring six short documentary and narrative films.
Disability rights activist Oluwaferanmi Okanlami will hold a Q&A after this program. As a third-year resident at Yale New Haven Hospital in Connecticut in 2013, he broke his neck in a pool accident and was partly paralyzed. He can walk now using assistive devices, some of which he helped to design. He also uses a standing frame wheelchair.
On that night there also will be a reception at the art exhibit space.
Among other films, a musician with cerebral palsy is the focus of “Mind Over Matter,” which will have its Pittsburgh premiere at 7:30 p.m. next Friday. Director Sebastien Paquet and documentary subject Brandon Mendenhall will host a Q&A after the screening to discuss this film that won the Audience Award at the Los Angeles Documentary Film Festival.
Festival tickets ($12 general admission, $8 for students under 26 with valid ID, and group rates) can be purchased at FilmPittsburgh.org or at the door. Opening night film and reception have higher ticket prices.
For all ticket information and full schedule, go to FilmPittsburgh.org.