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As Hollywood gets to grips with the portrayal of the struggle of women and African Americans for equality, the battle for the rights of those with disabilities has often been overlooked. Yet 61 million people in the US live with a disability, with the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention reporting in 2018 a quarter of the adult population have a form of disability. The most common disability, mobility affects one in seven adults in the US. Research has also shown that the next largest group are those with a cognitive disability followed by independent living, hearing, vision and self-care. The rights enjoyed by those with disabilities today were, like a lot of minorities, hard fought for and have been largely ignored. Nicole Newnham and James LeBrecht's Netflix acquired documentary 'Crip Camp' rectifies that situation, focusing on a group of young people whose activism had its roots in a summer camp in the Catskills in upstate New York. Camp Jened was a remarkable plac...

  Kris Bowers has had a stellar career as a musician and a composer. A talented pianist, he won the 2011 Thelonious Monk International Jazz Piano Competition at the age of 22. But he is best known for his scores for films and television, winning an Emmy for his work on the 2016 Amazon Prime animation 'A Snowy Day'. Among the other films and TV shows he has written scores for are Peter Farrelly's Best Picture Oscar winning ' Green Book,'  Netflix's powerful Central Park Five drama  'When They See Us'  and the upcoming 'Space Jam: A New Legacy'. Success has many fathers. However in the case of the Ava DuVernay produced Oscar nominated short  'A Concerto Is A Conversation,'  he has co-directed with Ben Proudfoot, it has a grandfather as well and his life is also worth celebrating. Horace Bowers Sr is a 92 year old entrepreneur who grew up in poverty in rural Florida whose decision to leave was prompted by racism. In the 13 minute film produc...

Michael Govier and Will McCormack's 'If Anything Happens, I Love You' is a real gut punch of a short film and that's before ii even gets to its big reveal. A 12 minute Netflix animation about parents grieving the loss of a 10 year old daughter, it is a modest reflection on a heartbreaking scenario that many people unfortunately have experienced. Losing a child to sudden death or illness is a bitter blow for any family to absorb. It just goes against the natural order for someone to die so young. A young life taken in tragic circumstances is even harder to bear. At the start of Govier and McCormack's most black and white animation, a couple sit at the dinner table hunched over their meals in silence. The table is long - emphasising the distance that has developed between them. And above their heads, shadows of themselves act out rowing that has obviously has been taking place. The woman sadly toys with the meatballs on her plate. Eventually the husband gets up and le...

The early 20th Century French author of 'Gigi,' Colette once observed how curious grief was. "One can resist tears and 'behave' very well in the hardest hours of grief," she observed. "But then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window, or one notices that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed, or a letter slips from a drawer.. and everything collapses." Grief is unpredictable and those going through it need the time and the space to properly process it. It is an individual experience and it can linger for decades. American documentary filmmaker Anthony Giacchino has earned an Oscar nomination by turning to another ' Colette ' wrestling with grief. Colette Marin-Catherine is a 90 year old former member of the French Resistance. Her entire family opposed the Nazis from the moment they invaded France, with her scribbling down as a child in her village the registrations of lorries carrying occupying soldiers as t...

  Great nature documentaries unlock mysteries about creatures most of us will never see in their natural habitats. David Attenborough has become something of an international treasure for the insights he has given us into the animal kingdom. Documentaries like Luc Jacquet's 2005 Academy Award winner 'March of the Penguins' have also rightly been celebrated. James Reed and Pippa Ehrlich's BAFTA winning feature documentary 'My Octopus Teacher' is, however, more than just a nature film. It's about a deep bond that develops between the South African cameraman and producer Craig Foster and a single octopus over the course of almost a year. It has all the wide eyed wonder of a great nature documentary. It has all the breathtaking visuals. But it may also have you reaching for a tissue to sob into as well. Narrated by Foster and using stunning underwater footage he and Roger Horrocks shot in a kelp forest in False Bay near Cape Town, it is a story about a man redis...

When it comes to making time loop movies, good luck trying to trump Harold Ramis' 'Groundhog Day'. Described by Sight and Sound as a Hollywood comedy imagined by Samuel Beckett, it remains the high watermark for films about people stuck reliving the same day. Over the years, there have been various attempts to recreate it's magic across genres. We have had sci-fi thriller takes on the time loop concept like Duncan Jones' 2011 film 'Source Code' with Jake Gyllenhaal and Doug Liman's 2014 Tom Cruise vehicle 'Edge of Tomorrow (Live. Die. Repeat)'. Christopher Landon's 2017 tale 'Happy Death Day' and his 2019 sequel 'Happy Death Day 2 U' gave it a horror movie twist. A whole Festive Season genre of the time loop movie has sprung up, with Donald Duck's nephews Huey, Louie and Dewie reliving Christmas Day in the 1999 direct to video anthology 'Mickey's Once Upon A Christmas' and Erik Von Detten's teenager and Jay...

Last December,  Variety noted that a third  of the lead actor Oscars since 1988 were handed out for roles involving disability. Dustin Hoffman, Daniel Day Lewis, Al Pacino, Tom Hanks, Jamie Foxx and Eddie Redmayne are among those who landed Oscars for such roles. And this tendency to see disabled roles as a route to Oscar glory has been savagely parodied in comedies, with Ben Stiller sending it up the  spoof trailer for 'Simple Jack'  in the Hollywood satire action comedy 'Tropic Thunder'. Disabled actors are biting back, as the backlash to Sia's movie  'Music' recently showed. Not every Oscar winning performance for a disability role should be denigrated, though. Who would begrudge Daniel Day Lewis or Eddie Redmayne their Oscars for 'My Left Foot' or  'The Theory of Everything' ? Technically and emotionally they are note perfect performances. And if Riz Ahmed somehow manages to buck the awards season trends on Oscars night and capture the Be...