Film Director with Down Syndrome
from The World Today, an Australian radio program on abc.net.au
Its producers say it is the first Australian film to be written and directed by a person with Downs-syndrome. The filmmaker - Rachel High - is a graduate of a program where students with a disability attend lectures at mainstream universities. Her film premiered in an Adelaide cinema this week.
At 31, Rachel High has achieved her dream and hundreds of friends, well-wishers and drama colleagues turned out to an Adelaide cinema to see her ground-breaking first film - a 20 minute production with the poetic title of "Brown the Dirt" Rachel described it: “It's about animals. It is mainly a voice on how I believe in animals, you know. How I feel about them plus I am not a big fan on animal cruelty so I felt that should be addressed.”
The film features some of Adelaide's leading actors, but the star is a young man who, like Rachel High, has Down-syndrome. Cole Larsen is the head of Screen Production at Flinders University. He was instrumental in helping Rachel High make the film. After the premiere Larson commented on Ms. High’s film, “Brown the Dirt is similar to children's TV comedy with typically Australian characters, a bit of slapstick humour, some bumbling adults and a fantastic young Down-syndrome lead actor, Lorkin Hopper, who plays Craig who is a bit of an adventurer and a lover of animals.”
Rachel High's path to becoming a filmmaker really began five years ago when she was asked to join the Up the Hill project at Flinders University. Under the program she participated in three years worth of drama orientated classes. John Grantley is director of the project which is the only one of its kind at an Australian university. The Up the Hill project was set up to include people with intellectual disabilities in university and it allowed them to develop social networks.
Rachel High got her filmmaking break when she met Cole Larsen during her time at Flinders. He discovered she'd been writing scripts and stories in her spare time. Larson remembers meeting her: “And so we got talking about the stories and what she wanted to do and really her aspiration was to one day make her own film. So I just sort of said without thinking about anything, well what is stopping you making this film.”
Recently a German doctor in country Victoria was refused permanent residency in Australia because his son has Down-syndrome and would be a cost to the taxpayer. John Grantley says Rachel High's achievement flies in the face of such thinking. “When Rachel first started,” Grantly said, “I had found it difficult to get a peep out of her at all. She has grown in confidence, her self-esteem and just the competencies that she has shown because she has been able to now show what skills she has and she is her own person now.”
