01/10/2019
With UNLOCKED, Henry Corra attempts to reach the unreachable with his unique brand of non-fiction filmmaking known as Living Cinema. "Everything I do is about making deep connections with people - any kind of person - on film," says Corra. His work-in-progress UNLOCKED is as much a laboratory as a film.
In and around St. Augustine, FL, teenagers and young adults are connecting to the world in a way that nobody around them thought was possible, including their families. A group of severe autistics are speaking their first words. They’ve lived their entire lives in a kind of exile, unable to translate thoughts into speech. UNLOCKED is a film about walking out of this prison into the bright sunlight.
For years, it was conventional wisdom that the form of autism they suffer from precluded all forms of communication. Doctors and caregivers assumed the idea of communication—of forming complex thoughts and making them known to others—was an impossibility. Many still do. The families of the people documented in UNLOCKED have discovered that although these people cannot speak coherently, what they can do is type. Sitting at a keyboard, their thoughts come pouring out, a lifetime of previously unheard utterances forming a deluge. The results are staggering. As Lanier, one of the major characters in the film, put it in her first typed message, “I am in here. I have always been in here.”
UNLOCKED: WORK-IN-PROGRESS
“I’ve spent my life looking for deep human connections on film,” Corra says. “And now we’ve found an entirely new way to do it. We’re trying to create an aesthetic platform that promotes empathy for our characters, and a way to take them seriously on their own terms. They have a lot to say, and we’re helping them to use film language to say it.”
The making of the film has itself been a part of the journey, so the film, in a sense, is about the process of making it. The characters have come to depend on it, anticipating and preparing for the next shoot. For UNLOCKED, Corra and his crew have developed a striking visual vocabulary. They’ve set up a studio that eliminates sensory overload—“a connection space,” as Corra calls it—in which the characters type their thoughts. As they do, the words scroll in large type across screens suspended in front of them, a subtle amplification of their voices.
UNLOCKED will be a testament to the power of cinematic language, as well as the culmination of these pioneering methods. As the progenitor of Living Cinema, Corra eschews the verité approach favored by traditional documentaries, instead collaborating with his subjects so everyone plays an active role in deciding how the film will unfold. Will this approach allow him to truly reach the unreachable?
Vimeo link to teaser found here: https://vimeo.com/295246914
This is "Unlocked Teaser" by Corra Films on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love them.
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