Last night I watched 2011 winner of the United Nations Grand Jury Prize for Best Short Documentary directed and produced by Andrew Walton. The film is entitled The Thing That Happened (thethingthathappened.com…see link above). It is about makeshift school in Uganda for children who were abducted and forced into the military. The film left me speechless – stunningly beautiful, heart-wrenchingly painful, but also transcendently hopeful. As I watched, I felt waves of gratitude because the future of Mind Body Solutions is getting even brighter. Amazingly talented people are putting their shoulder to the wheel of our work.
I met Andrew Walton in 2008. At that time, he contacted me about making a documentary about my work and the work at Mind Body Solutions. The idea was to tell my story and shed light on my mind-body approach to trauma, loss, and disability. After filming me with some of my students, Andrew was confidant that he could capture the profound moments of healing realization that often occurs in our work. The early vision for a film project was to tell this story in relation to our returning wounded warriors.
The project fits with a core strategy of Mind Body Solutions. One of our aims is to inspire people living with trauma, loss, and disability to take a mind-body approach to healing and living well. In short, we want to create demand for a mind-body approach from the consumer side. A powerful and hopeful film would achieve that.
Over the years, Andrew and I have become friends. We have kept in contact, biding our time, waiting to gain more access to our wounded warriors. This has proven extremely difficult so the project had stalled.
Andrew called me a couple weeks ago. After winning the United Nations award, he reconnected to his roots as a filmmaker. In that project, he and his cinematographer (who happens to live in Stillwater, MN) jumped on a plane to Africa with no expectations of length or finished product. The story they found turned into an award-winning short film. Andrew wants to do the same with Mind Body Solutions. The upshot is that Andrew and his cinematographer are coming this Wednesday to start filming and a project of collaboration begins in earnest. Over the course of the next year, I will give periodic updates in this blog. Andrew is also joining me at the end of this month when I present at Spaulding Rehabilitation Center in Boston, MA.
After watching Andrew’s latest film last night, I know that we are in for a beautiful, honest, and powerful cinematic experience. Get on board!