For documentary filmmakers Irene Taylor Brodsky and Ben Byer, an intimate personal knowledge of disability and disease has translated into success on the film festival circuit.
By Shelley Gabert, FilmStew.com
After winning an Audience Award at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival and garnering a Producers Guild of America nomination for (Documentary) Producer of the Year, Hear and Now premiered this Thursday, May 8th on HBO (8:00 – 9:30 p.m. ET/PT). Written, directed and produced by Irene Taylor Brodsky, the film follows the filmmaker's deaf-from-birth parents, Sally and Paul Taylor, as they undergo cochlear implant surgery at age 65.
Described as a documentary memoir, the film includes home movie footage of her parents' childhood, who met at the Central Institute for the Deaf in St. Louis. Her mother's expert lip-reading skills were used to help law enforcement investigations, while her father, an engineer and retired professor, contributed to the development of TTY, a widely used telecommunication device for the hearing-impaired.
A candid look at the life of her deaf parents and the condition of being deaf, it's Brodsky's observations, concerns and questions about her parents expressed in the film that provide a powerful context, making the story more accessible and relatable to other hearing people. As her parents struggle to adapt to the procedure and to hearing itself, the film offers no pat answers in terms of whether it was worth it or not. As Brodsky asks in the film, "After this surgery, who will they be? Will they still be deaf people, or hearing people, or will they be something in between?"
What's striking about the narrative of Hear and Now is that Brodsky's parents are very happy in their silent world. They have a loving marriage and relationship with their three hearing children; they enjoy walking their dogs and doing what the rest of us do. Still, it would have been nice if the film told us more about what led them to undergo a risky surgery at this late stage of their lives.
There's no question that Brodsky is a filmmaker first as she for example chronicles her mother's emotional breakdowns from behind the camera. But it's the merging of filmmaker and daughter that makes this documentary and memoir so compelling and appealing to a mass audience.
The same is true of Indestructible, a documentary written, directed, produced and in this case even more prominently starring Ben Byer. Diagnosed at age 31 with ALS, a fatal neurodegenerative disease, the film charts three years in the life of a father of a young son no longer able to make a living as a Chicago actor and playwright.
Inevitably, what started out as a video diary of Byer's own experiences eventually expanded to include other ALS sufferers as well as interviews and commentary from medical experts such as Dr. Oliver Sacks, author and clinical professor of neurology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and adjunct professor of neurology at the NYU School of Medicine. Indestructible won Best Documentary awards in last year from San Jose's Cinequest event and the Lake County Film Festival.
Now, after world premiering last Friday in Madison, Wisconsin, it is being presented at downtown L.A.'s Laemmle Theater Grande 4 May 16th through the 22nd by the ALS Film Fund, a Winston-Salem based organization created by Byer with his sister Rebeccah Rush, a co-producer on the film. The fund's mission is to educate, inspire and change for the future benefit of ALS sufferers.
Indestructible is beautifully shot by producer-turned-cinematographer Roko Belic, who received a 1999 Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary and a Sundance Film Festival Adience Award for Genghis Blues. Meanwhile, the original score is by Alison Chesley, a Chicago based rock cellist, is a perfect match for the material.
Of the two documentaries, Indestructible is sometimes the harder one to watch due to the weakening of Byer's body and abilities to speak, walk and talk. Nonetheless, like Hear and Now, the overall experience of the film is that of basking in the power of an amazing and inspiring human spirit. Especially when you consider that once diagnosed, most people with ALS don't live more than six years.
Byer's mom, dad, son and other friends accompany Byer on trips to see medical experts and meet other ALS sufferers all over the world, in places like Greece, China and Jamaica. Medical experts comment on the disease and the lack of scientific breakthroughs, while both mainstream and herbal treatments are focused on as Byer tries "to unlock the secrets of ALS."
By the end of the film, Byer can hardly talk; he's very thin and we know how this journey is going to end. But it's his willingness to let the camera and the audience into his life that makes Indestructible so unforgettable. is much more than just a film, instead it's Byer's legacy to his family, his son and the world. And though Hear and Now is Brodsky's theatrical documentary debut, she won an Emmy in 2003 for a documentary short on the late architect Samuel Mockbee and has had a hand in non-fiction programming for HBO, A&E, CBS and Fox.
In Theaters 
