Chained for Life

classified 15
Film

Please note: This was screened in Oct 2019

Director
Aaron Schimberg
Cast
Jess Weixler, Adam Pearson, Stephen Plunkett
Details
92 mins, 2018, USA
Primary language
English
"The finest, funniest, and most cryptically thoughtful film on the subject (of ableism) that I’ve seen in this or any year." - Big Easy Magazine

Director Aaron Schimberg's multi-layered, darkly comic film-within-a-film examines the treatment of disability on screen and on set.

When Mabel (Jess Weixler) takes a role in a shlocky European art-horror film directed by an eccentric German auteur, she is cast opposite Rosenthal (Under The Skin's Adam Pearson, who joins us for a Q&A after our Sat 26 Oct 15:00 screening), a gentle-natured young man with a severe facial deformity (Pearson has neurofibromatosis) and a collection of physically disfigured and disabled performers. As their relationship revolves and the shoot wears on, both the tables and the identities of the players pivot, with multiple layers of story blurring the reality at play...

Schimberg (who himself has undergone dozens of surgeries to address a bilateral cleft palate) has made a surreal satire, one that raises questions about cinematic notions of beauty, representation, and exploitation. Referencing the likes of Tod Browning, David Lynch, RW Fassbinder and The Muppets (seriously), it refuses to give any easy answers - you will be left reeling long after the credits roll.


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