Join us for this special event as part of of the 2021 8th National Sibling Leadership Network Conference (June 19th)!
Register on our Conference main page!
6pmPT/7pmMT/8pmCT/9pmET
Movie and Conversation with Filmmaker
The film called “3Conversations in April” is an 11 minute portrayal from the perspective of a sibling recorded in April 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic. Susan Hamovitch, the filmmaker, shares recordings of the first phone calls she’s ever made to her brother — an older man with autism, who does not use words to communicate — as she attempts to find ways to provide something familiar in her brother’s upended life. Her quest to communicate has been made ever more urgent because her brother has just recently been diagnosed COVID positive and placed in complete isolation in his group home, miles away.
As Susan gives Alan ever cheerier pep talks from her apartment in Brooklyn, she is never certain about whether he understands that it’s she whose voice he is hearing at the other end of the phone. Meanwhile, the viewer will watch as darker themes emerge — the series of illogical and unfeeling policy decisions made by a system that governs the care of those with intellectual disabilities, the worried lives of the staff. Through a steady interspersing of titles and reenactments, the film gradually reveals some unsettling realities.
- Susan Hamovitch, Filmmaker
- Moderator: Sheena Brevig
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