Whose Voice Is It Anyway, a film about two women with cerebral palsy made by filmmaker Kate Caryer, will air on Channel 4 this week.
Writer/director Kate Caryer has lived experience of athetoid cerebral palsy, and she’s used that experience to create a rather special film that’s airing on Channel 4 this Thursday, 24th November, at 00:05am.
Whose Voice Is It Anyway is a mockumentary that follows the parallel lives of two women with athetoid cerebral palsy. The difference between them is that Charlie has a voice, and Lottie doesn’t.
Of the film, Caryer says “Imagine living in a world without the ability to speak. Your decisions are made for you, and you are stripped of all autonomy. This is the reality for many disabled people without speech. Kept as a child long after their adolescence is over, trapped in their heads as their parents are hailed as martyrs.
The tool that can set you free is Augmentative and Alternative Communication, aka AAC. It’s certainly in existence but this ’liberator’ is at best unknown to some families or worse deemed unimportant. I want to encourage parents to see the benefits of a life with communication and how it can empower individuals to live a full and rewarding life.
Without a ‘Talker’, a human being is denied the right to a voice, autonomy and opinion. As much as Charlie is empowered by having access to AAC in this film, Lottie is oppressed by being denied it.”
The film was commissioned by Channel 4 Random Acts through Little By Little Films. It’s good to see an underrepresented filmmaker like Caryer get to make a film based on her experience and have it broadcast on UK TV, even if it is being shown in a rather inaccessible time slot.
However, you can still see the film after it’s broadcast via the Channel 4 Random Acts YouTube channel.
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