So all week I have been trying to get this little story about BAFTA into the wider world via the fourth estate (the press ) and with varying degrees of success. The Times have done a story but not run it yet and The Observer are also sniffing about as are the Evening Standard. Hopefully one or all of these papers will run the story and that will show the mighty BAFTA not to fuck with the cripples (we can bite you know). BAFTA have freaked out and are using Freud communications one of the worlds biggest PR Co’s with a range of corporate and celebrity clients second to none – Tony Blair, for example, was advised by them. That’s right – Matthew Freud married to Elizabeth Murdoch daughter of Rupert (the Times is a Murdoch owned paper). They told the Times that it was all a mistake in communication about the criteria regarding how they run joint events and that LDAF could have the BAFTA cinema to show the film but without BAFTA’s support. Their criteria apparently, was to highlight the problems of being a disabled film-maker, but the kicker is this: BAFTA offered to show “Lars and the real girl” as an alternative to my film. For those of you that don’t know “Lars and the real girl” is a Hollywood comedy about an able bodied man who has a life sized doll as a girl friend. It’s a good film but hardly a film that prompts debate or challenges the societal view of disability, let alone highlighting the problems of being a disabled film-maker – talk about insensitive….So, they are trying to use their PR company to stop them looking like the prejudiced tyrants that they are. I really don’t know why they have taken against my film in this way, it sort of defies understanding. I suspect, though, that right now they are more concerned about not wanting to be portrayed in the National Press as anti- minority, than with my film. Watch this space for more news….
Meanwhile here’s a short trailer you can watch
