Seemingly to the disappointment of Kim, her classmates were very accepting of her new identity, leaving not much to explore for the film. Prodigal Sons then switches to focus on Mark. The film presents a complex relationship among the siblings (which also includes their brother Todd who doesn’t appear much in the film). Mark was left behind a grade early in school putting him in the same class with Paul who was a successful student and athlete. Mark clearly resents his brother’s success and never came to fully accept his transformation.

Part of the film is dedicated to Mark’s search for his biological parents. He discovers that his mother is Rebecca Welles, making Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth his grandparents. This discovery temporarily gives him some sense of importance. Unfortunately, this positive turn does not last very long.

Prodigal Sons is fascinating at times, but often feels exploitive of Mark’s condition and his violent tendencies, especially toward the end of the film which includes extended scenes of his violence toward his family. Prodigal Sons provides some interesting insights into gender identity and mental illness but never goes deep enough and favors drama over depth.

• Jack Kerouac: Le Sel de la Semaine
• The Suzuki Diaries: Sustainability in Action

You can see all my EMRO Reviews here.

Tying Your Own Shoes is a short film (about 16 minutes) so these portraits are very cursory.  Unfortunately, these brief portraits feel slight and left me wanting to know about these people. The film works as a brief introduction to what living with Down Syndrome is like and provides an enlightened view of the condition. Unfortunately, it does present any new information to anyone other than those totally unfamiliar with the topic. Because of this basic approach, the short run time, and the animation, Tying Your Own Shoes seems more appropriate for a younger audience. That’s not a criticism of the film, just a concern of its appropriateness for the Notable Videos for Adults list.

The film implies that the animation was done by the 4 interviewees; however the end credits reveals three additional animators, leaving one to wonder how much of the animation was done by the individuals portrayed in the film.

Note: I have started a page to list all the 2011 films.

The database is searchable, but it is also indexed by a variety of criteria. In addition to obvious categories like movie title and actor, the clips are also indexed by genre, occasion, mood and theme among others. One strange omission is production year. API access is available and the explanation shows that production year is part of the metadata, so I am not sure why this bit of information is not searchable.

And just because I can:

The official announcement includes annotations and purchasing information. Below is the list of the selections with links to my reviews, where available:

• American Outrage
• At the Death House Door
• FLOW: For Love of Water
• In Search of Memory
• I.O.U.S.A.
• Lake of Fire
• Malls R Us
• Operation Filmmaker
• Sita Sings the Blues
• Trouble the Water
• Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick
• Walk to Beautiful
• Waltz with Bashir
• Who Does She Think She Is?
• The World According to Monsanto

• The Last Days of Shishmaref
• Split Estate

Although the film rests definitively on the side of pro-choice, it allows defenders on both sides of the issue speak their minds. At nearly two and a half hours long, the film allows the issues to develop slowly and thoroughly and with intelligence. Despite showing the pro-life movement in a bad light by focusing a good deal on the violence perpetrated by some of the more extreme people, the film is most concerned with showing the complexity of the issue.

With a lengthy running time and with covering a long period of time and a wide-variety of voices, Lake of Fire could have easily lost it’s narrative path, but it never does. The film is well-organized, brilliantly edited and beautifully filmed. The choice to film or convert footage to black and white helps take away any distractions of the different time periods and allows the filmmakers show graphic material in a way that has an impact but it not so graphic as to feel gratuitous.

Second Skin provides a lot of statistics throughout, but sometimes they seem out of context. The numbers are often only tangentially related to the story.

The section about the liberating effects of online gaming for those with physical disabilities is disappointingly short and feels like a bit of an afterthought. The film would have been stronger if one of the subjects from this short segment were one of the people the film follows more thoroughly.