Event Details

To raise awareness and celebrate World Autism Acceptance Week the Library presents a screening of the film 'Life, animated'...

To raise awareness and celebrate World Autism Acceptance Week the Library presents a screening of the film 'Life, animated'. Join us at 7 p.m. in the Library Exhibition area on A floor - bring your popcorn!

Life, Animated is a documentary film released in 2016, directed by Roger Ross Williams, based on a book of the same name written by Ron Suskind.

In it Suskind tells the story of his son Owen, who was diagnosed with autism at the age of three and who discovered a passion for Disney’s animated films, which later provided him with a means to communicate with his family and to make sense of his emotions more effectively.

The film is nominated for Best Documentary Feature in the 2017 Academy Awards and has already won eleven other awards.

The Royal College of Psychiatrists review of the film goes on to say

Life, Animated is a documentary film that highlights the therapeutic power of the creative arts.

The Suskind family’s story helps to underline the positive benefits they found in sharing in the affinity or passion of their autistic son in order to open up a medium for communication that allowed them to connect with him socially.

The exaggerated expressions on the faces of the characters in animated films encouraged him to learn about the emotions and feelings of both himself and others and the scripts gave him a means of saying what he felt.

It is hard not to be moved by watching Owen engrossed in the scene in which Bambi painfully calls out for his lost mother just after his parents have delivered him to his first night alone in his supported living accommodation.