disability

Documentary Captures Life in a Wheelchair

March 27th, 2009 |

Author: Cisco

by Catherine Mabe

What could you learn if you gave a few people cameras and asked them to show you their lives? That’s the question writer, director, and producer Gretchen Berland set out to answer when she mounted cameras to the wheelchairs of three Los Angeles residents and gave them free rein to film their daily lives.

Two years later, Berland had 212 hours of tape, which was a complex mixture of wit, sadness, happiness, frustration, humor . . . and everything in-between. When cut down, the tape (which gives viewers a real, first-person perspective of what it’s like for the wheelchair-bound to navigate through life) was transformed into the one-hour documentary, Rolling: Life in a Wheelchair.

The Main Subjects of Rolling:

Galen Buckwalter, a clinical psychologist who ran “for the sheer fun of it” until, he says, “. . . a smooth swan dive on a nice summer day ended when I hit a rock and was left paralyzed from the neck down. I’ve used a wheelchair for 30 years now.”
Ernie Wallengren, a 48-year-old TV writer with five children. Wallengren suffers from ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) and can no longer walk as a result. “I am bored beyond belief,” he says of life with the disease. “The boredom—boy, is that the mainstay of life with ALS.”
Vicki Elman, whose battle with multiple sclerosis (MS) ended her career as the business manager for a department at the UCLA School of Medicine. One of the most heart-wrenching scenes in this film centers on Elman’s intense frustration over the malfunction of her motorized wheelchair when she is dropped off 10 feet from the entrance to her home. She remains there as the sun sets because a company policy prevents the access van driver from helping her to her door.
All three subjects were involved in editing the film to ensure that the reality of their everyday moments was preserved and presented in the way the film intended. Berland is quick to point out that since her approach to Rolling was far from traditional, aspects of the film’s production were untraditional as well.

Berland hopes the film’s real message resonates far and wide, from the masses that catch it on public television to health policy decision-makers. She is planning a screening for members of Congress in Washington, D.C.

Produced, written, and directed by Berland, an assistant professor of medicine at Yale University, Rolling is presented on public television by Thirteen/WNET New York and distributed by American Public Television (check local listings for show times.).