Losing It2000

(Shot on 16mm)
Losing It by award-winning director Sharon Greytak takes us on a cross-cultural world tour from New York to Siberia, Italy to Brazil and on to Hong Kong as she reveals the aspirations and realities of people living with physical disability. Through subjective interviews and an evocative visual style, Greytak who has used a wheelchair since childhood, weaves a personal journey of resilience, vulnerability and the struggle to carve out a sense of purpose and worth with physical, social and economic limitations. Individuals interviewed include two Russians, a man and a woman with cerebral palsy, from Siberia who speak about their struggle for independence and opportunity; a woman from Hong Kong who had a stroke and has gained great insights into the world of disability in Chinese society; Northern Italian artist, Marino Crivellari who, ten years earlier developed Wilson's Disease, a rare blood disorder, leaving his mental capacities perfectly intact, but his external body severely affected; two Brazilians: a post-polio woman who has sold candy car to car at the traffic light from her wheelchair for the past twelve years to support her son and mother, and the well-known writer Marcello Paiva who became quadriplegic from a diving accident twenty years ago;an American woman living with post-polio who battled severe social and family prejudice when she entered an interracial marriage and had children.