Wilbur Force: The Comeback Of A New-Zealand Wrestling Legend

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Loading Docs is a New-Zealand initiative producing 3-minute short documentaries with the aim of captivating and inspiring audiences around the world.

In this video, director J.Ollie Lucks’ tells the story of former NZ-pro wrestler and close mate Wilbur Force who is looking to reconnect with his glory days.

Witness the not-so-gentle ribbing between friends as Lucks’ pushes Wilbur to get his life back together while the former-wrestling star resists his mates encouragement and criticisms of laziness.

You can see more from the team at Loading Docs by visiting here.

via The Huffington Post Australia

The Transformative Power of Dancing in the Dark

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Peter Vosper is an engineer by day, but at night he can be found dancing in the streets in a glowing body suit. This short documentary follows Vosper to No Lights No Lycra, a weekly dance event where strangers come together in a dark room to see where the music takes them. “It feels like you are in some music video,” he says. “The feeling I get when I’m dancing in the dark—when you’re free and connected with your body and the community—has basically been the driving force behind my art.”

The Loading Docs initiative supports 10 filmmaking teams to create three-minute, creative documentaries that tell New Zealand stories. This year’s theme is connection.

via The Atlantic

The woman who has spent the past TEN YEARS in a blindfold: Sufferer’s rare illness causes her excruciating pain when she is exposed to sound and light

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  • Gina, who is in her mid-40s, has been bedridden in New Zealand for years
  • Extremely rare genetic disorder affects her eyes, ears, larynx and joints
  • She can only communicate through the use of a touch alphabet system
  • Her tragic story is the subject of a new documentary by Loadings Docs
  • She is desperate to get voluntary euthanasia legalised in New Zealand

This woman has been forced to live blindfolded in her dark bedroom with headphones over her ears ever since a crippling genetic disorder took hold of her body.

Gina, who is in her mid-40s, has been bedridden in her New Zealand home for several years due to an extremely rare illness that affects her eyes, ears, larynx and joints.

Sound and light cause her body further damage and Gina is unable to talk – she can only communicate through the use of a touch alphabet system.

The condition, which she has had for a decade and doctors haven’t been able to explain, has made it impossible for her to participate in every day life.  Read more

Documentary Makers Expose Horror for New Zealand Woman Living with Cruel Genetic Disorder

news.com.auShe lives in the dark with a blindfold over her eyes and headphones over her ears.

Sunlight and sound are too much for her fragile body.

A cruel genetic condition makes it impossible for her to use her voice and incredibly painful to move her limbs. She loves hugs but can’t hug back because of the agony it causes.

And her condition will only get worse.

New Zealand woman Gina, whose full name has been withheld, is in her mid 40s. She’s been suffering like this in a dark, silent room for more than a decade. The worst part: doctors don’t know exactly what’s wrong with her.

Gina has told her story for the first time to documentary makers, revealing she has nothing left to live for and just wants to die. The problem is, her government won’t let her.  Read more

Woman Trapped in Bed Fights for Right to Die

logo_2x-5eea932d4af25172b6ffbe2d4f4ee99e28ff88e499935baec7c6f4ad1abc0ab2What kind of condition forces someone to be trapped in bed, unable to move their body while they suffer in complete darkness? Well, we can’t tell you — because doctors can’t diagnose it.

For Gina, a New Zealand woman in her mid-40s, the condition is a very real, very painful situation she’s endured for more than a decade. Her illness leaves her body in an incredibly fragile state, unable to use her voice or move her limbs. She spends every day in bed, wearing a blindfold and earphones; sunlight and sound bring her too much pain.

As reported by news.com.au, a new documentary called One Woman’s Fight to Die, directed by Wendell Cooke, follows Gina and her request to die from voluntary euthanasia. Using a touch alphabet to communicate, Gina explains that she wants her doctor to give her medicine that would send her to sleep and allow her to die a humane death. But New Zealand does not allow assisted suicide. In the United States, it’s legal in Montana, Oregon, Vermont, Washington and some parts of New Mexico, according to CNN.

No matter your stance on assisted suicide, this short, three-minute video is a heartbreaking insight into one woman’s struggle to survive a life restricted to bed.

via Van Winkle’s

Wilbur Force

SOTW-Laurels-NameLET’S GET READY TO RUMBLE!! Weighing in at 3mins & 30secs and coming straight out of the Loading Docs stable, J.Ollie Lucks’ high-tempo short Wilbur Force is a heavyweight example of just how much fun you can pack into such a tight duration. Piledriving his camera into the face of ex-pro-wrestling star and friend Wilbur Force, director Lucks has created a hilarious, yet touching short that centres around themes of friendship and fame.

“What if the man I have become gets to meet the man I could have become.”

Created as part of the Loading Docs series, an initiative that produces short (3-minute) documentaries to help promote and develop New Zealand filmmaking talent, director Lucks admits the main inspiration behind by his short, was the desire to work with his friend. “I always wanted to make films with Wilbur”, he says, “it started out as a straight-up documentary about the challenges he deals with regarding his weight etc. But then life happened. Wilbur happened… and things took a different turn….I set out for the process of creating this documentary to help Wilbur get off his ass. And it totally worked…There is a saying that I like and want to address with this film: What if the man I have become gets to meet the man I could have become. Holding on to ones best self is so important but quite hard at times. We all know what it is like. Thereby this documentary is also about the importance of friendship in reminding you of your former, best self”.  Read more

Madness Made Me

Screen Shot 2015-08-13 at 11.01.43 amDown the end of the long polished corridor, Mary O’Hagan comes face to face with the condemning words written about her in her psychiatric files. Director: Nikki Castle Producer: Alexander Gandar

“The files were all about me, but couldn’t see ‘me’ in them.”

This is a wonderful 3-minute film that sums up the feelings of someone ‘lost’ in the mental health system. It’s also about recovery. I think the film is best summed up by someone who has been there, so I leave you words from Laura Delano from her excellent website.

‘I watched the 3-minute documentary Madness Made Me the other day, and found myself nodding in solidarity and thinking “Hear, hear!” to myself as I watched the protagonist, Mary O’Hagan, reclaim her personal narrative from psychiatry.  Read more

One Woman’s Fight to Die

logo_atlantic-5b33470f4ada56c0097447002ab7a177Gina has an extreme genetic disorder that has caused her muscles to deteriorate. Sound and light harm her ears, so she sits in complete darkness. Gina communicates using a touch alphabet method—and in this moving short film from New Zealand’s Loading Docs initiative, she makes her case for voluntary euthanasia. “I think a compassionate god would want people to have the option of a humane death,” Gina says, her words flashing on the screen. The film is minimalistic and visual, and for a few minutes we are able to get a brief sense of what it’s like in Gina’s silent, dark world.  Read more

A UN Advisor Reading What Psychiatrists Wrote About Her Will Make You Question “Insanity”

ThePlaidZebraLogoAt the end of a long and sterile corridor, Mary O’Hagan feels the noose of madness begin to tighten. As a young woman in the 1970s, she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and spent several dark years in and out of psychiatric hospitals.

“I’m glad I didn’t know I was going to be the chair of an international network, have a book published in Japanese, advise the United Nations or become a New Zealand mental health commissioner. If I’d told a psychiatrist I was going to do these things they would have upped my anti-psychotics on the spot. They kept pouring accelerant onto my years of despair by telling me I had an ‘ongoing disability’ and needed to ‘lower my horizons,’ writes O Hagan.  Read more