SHERMAN OAKS, CA — With the growing awareness and greater education about autism and other disorders that once condemned children thus afflicted to lives of isolation and loneliness, come bold attempts to push the envelope and uncover possibilities for creative achievements few imagined exist among this misunderstood and marginalized segment of the population.
The Arts/Special Needs Interest Comes to the Big Screen
SHERMAN OAKS, CA — With the growing awareness and greater education about autism and other disorders that once condemned children thus afflicted to lives of isolation and loneliness, come bold attempts to push the envelope and uncover possibilities for creative achievements few imagined exist among this misunderstood and marginalized segment of the population.
On March 3, Normal Films and Chabad’s Friendship Circle in Agoura Hills, will show The Premiere of ARTS, A Film About Possibilities, Disabilities & The ARTS.
For film producer Keri Bowers, a single mother of an autistic child, the road to finding acceptance was a long one. When her son Taylor Cross, now twenty, was diagnosed with high functioning autism at 6, she was forced to deal with, in her words “the death of the dream,” her initial pain and anguish that her son would never be like other children.
Back then, teachers in public schools, ignorant about autism, refused to teach Taylor. Conventional therapy was basically designed to preoccupy or limit otherwise gifted individuals suffering from autism, Aspergers Syndrome, and other disorders associated with difficulties in social interaction.
The isolation from the mainstream community made Taylor sad, but it pained his mother and brother even more.
Instead of seeing her son tasked with menial labor such as cleaning or stocking shelves in a local supermarket, Bowers turned to other sources for inspiration.
A natural artist herself, she saw the creative arts as a medium for Taylor and others with autism spectrum disorder to channel their inwardly focused energies to the world at large in a non-threatening fashion.Bowers soon became an advocate for developmentally disabled children and their families.
In ARTS, Bowers tells the story of her own heart, of artists whose disabilities would have precluded them from careers in mainstream society were it not for the growing awareness and education of the specialness of these people, a cause, Keri would soon learn, that was shared passionately by Chabad’s Friendship Circle.
