The creative team behind Love will be discussing disability, inclusivity and diversity within the film landscape and opening up the conversation about normalising creative support throughout the industry.
Rather than a film ‘about’ autism, Love invites its audience to consider the world from the point of view of an autistic person. The film’s writer Gemma Harvey, long-standing Creative Support for leading actor Jules Robertson, wanted to challenge the common misconception that autistic people don’t experience emotion. Using the power of film and its empathic qualities, she takes the audience along for the ride on deeply-felt and amplified emotions and the bewilderment involved in trying to navigate the complexities of human emotion, and where friendship ends and love begins.
The filmmakers – an almost exclusively female team – aimed to tell an autistic person’s story in a manner that reflects the way that autistic people often explain how they experience the world. Director Jane Ashmore uses sound as a hyperreal experience, both in the environmental sound which affects the central character and in his use of music as a refuge and as a guide to navigate the social conundrums he encounters.
Creating the opportunity for an autistic actor to tell this story was of equal importance to the team. It is hoped that with each film casting disabled actors, who bring lived experience to a role, the film industry will become braver in including more disability diversity in the future.
BUSTING THE BIAS
Press Reset on Ableism and pre-recorded keynote by Andrew Miller MBE + Disability On Screen: Past, Present and Future
Fri 3 Dec 12:45
TAPE Community Music and Film panel discussion + UK Premiere: Approaching Shadows
Fri 3 Dec 15:00
Love + Q&A
Sat 4 Dec 13:30
It’s Personal + Q&A
Sat 4 Dec 15:15
Talking Bodies: A Rehearsed Reading & Q&A
Sun 5 Dec 14:00
Aimee Victoria + Q&A + The Multi
Sun 5 Dec 16:00
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Programme notes and credits compiled by the BFI Documentation Unit
Notes may be edited or abridged
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