Brain Injury Dialogues:
an important documentary showing the challenges faced by five brain injury 'survivors'.
January 11, 2010: Brain injury is one of the most common forms of disability, and yet one of the least understood. Brain Injury Dialogues explores the lives of five survivors of a brain injury, showing their different ways of managing living with this disability.
The 52-minute documentary will be airing on Manhattan Neighborhood Network,
Channel 56, Sunday, January 17 at 10pm
Channel 67, Monday, February 1 at 7:30pm
Brain injury is often considered a 'hidden disability' as the cognitive and other 'deficits' caused by an injury to the brain may seem to have no outward visible signs. “Because brain injury is invisible, it often doesn’t get properly diagnosed. Sometimes people think those afflicted with this profound disability are faking it—or making things up,” says the documentary’s co-director Rick Franklin, himself an 18-year survivor of a brain injury.
“In this documentary we hear about the lives of survivors in their own voices, we didn’t set out to make a medical documentary about this disability, we wanted to make sure survivors themselves are able to be heard,” says the documentary's co-director Lyell Davies.
As a result of his injury, Rick Franklin suffers from constant fatigue and is prone to 'distractibility' in noise or movement filled environments. Rick has been unable to hold a job since his injury, and describes the pressures of working on a documentary video as “challenging beyond belief”. “We hope our documentary will screen around the country—we also hope people will use it in their communities to increase awareness about this extreme form of disability,” he adds.
The documentary also highlights the role survivors can play in organizing on their own behalf—to increase awareness about brain injury and the demand for 'accommodations' survivors would greatly benefit from in today's world.
For more information about Brain Injury Dialogues or to arrange a screening in your community,
contact: info@braininjurydialogues.org