Jama Mohamed was awarded micro-funding from Metro Arts to collaborate with the TN Disability Coalition to empower families and individuals effected by life long special needs. Jama has visited the homes of parents and individuals with special needs personally to teach the basics of creating video. On each visit, using his equipment, they directed their own 5-shot short. This project aims to spotlight an underrepresented community. By sharing these stories, they can work to normalize their experience and the experience of others who also have life-long special needs.
Seven individuals participated in this project. Their shorts will be screened alongside Jama's short The Big Pull (a short about Alex Nicely, a man with CP setting a world record) and Kelly O’Brien’s film Softening: Loving a Child with Special Needs. There will also be a discussion about the shorts and Q&A with Kelly after viewing.
“Softening, I made about our experience of raising a child with severe physical and developmental disabilities. Created over the span of five years, that film captures moments, memories and reflections from our everyday lives. In an impressionistic way, it documents our challenges, changes and celebrations. It began as a film about my relationship with Teddy, but became a film about my family and all of our evolving relationships with him.” Kelly O’brien
Softening won the grand jury prize in the shorts competition at the 2013 DOC.