Latest news with #ReidDavenport
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
A Disabled Woman Wanted to Starve Herself to Death. The State Wouldn't Let Her. A New Doc Looks at Her Case (Exclusive)
NEED TO KNOW Director Reid Davenport's new documentary Life After examines the right-to-die question through the experiences of disabled people Reid, who has cerebral palsy, uses the case of Elizabeth Bouvia, a young woman with cerebral palsy, as the centerpiece of the film Bouvia was denied the right to starve herself in 1983Allowing a person with a dire health diagnosis or an unbearable level of pain to die might seem like an act of mercy to some people. But what would happen if the government were to decide that anyone with a disability deserves the right to die? Filmmaker Reid Davenport confronts this question in his new documentary Life After, primarily through the story of Elizabeth Bouvia, a California woman with cerebral palsy who, at the age of 26, sought the legal right to starve herself to death. This was in 1983, and some TV news broadcasts questioned why someone who was young and beautiful would want to end her life. She said she wanted to die because she hadn't been given the right to live in a society with a healthcare structure that valued the bottom line over her well-being. Davenport, who also has cerebral palsy, and his producing partner at Multitude Films, Colleen Cassingham, kept hearing similar reasoning while making Life After, which is now playing in select theaters. Bouvia articulated her argument well when her case moved to court — she was in pain, tired and bogged down by bureaucracy — but the state eventually sided with the hospital, which said it could not betray its oath to first do no harm. So what happened to this so-called pioneer in the right-to-die movement after the case ended? That is the question Davenport set out to answer when he started working on Life After. Framed by Bouvia's story, the documentary explores expanded Canadian policies that allow nearly anyone with a disability to apply to die, why some disabled people have made the tough choice to die and how advocates for MAiD (medical aid in dying) defend the expansion of the policies from people with a terminal diagnosis to anyone with a disability. The film amplifies varied voices and points of view, like Melissa Hickson, who says her husband Michael Hickson was denied lifesaving care because doctors decided his quality of life was too low, and Catherine Frazee, a professor who posits that you cannot address human suffering by killing people. One participant, Michal Kaliszan, details how he considered assisted dying after his mother, who was his primary caretaker, died, and he could no longer afford the care he needed. While working on the documentary, Cassingham had to navigate a shift in taking right-to-die activism at face value as progressivism to fully understanding the implications of applying it to all disabled people. "I thought assisted dying was really about personal choice and bodily autonomy, values that I'm deeply committed to," she tells PEOPLE. "And in learning from Reid and in working on this film, I realized there's so much more to the picture of how it actually works in society, and it's deeply linked with the ways that we do and don't value certain lives, and a deep-seated ableism that underpins so much of society." Over the course of Life After, as Davenport searches for Bouvia's family and seeks to find out if she is still living, two themes emerge: that the focus on right-to-die policies ignores that so many disabled people are not given the right to live and that any one person deciding what a good quality of life is for someone else can be tricky. "The themes at the heart of this film are not niche; they're not particular to the disability community. Things like healthcare, isolation and the way that we value other human lives are universal," Cassingham says. "Everyone has a stake in the fight for a society that is invested in care and in upholding each other's dignity in the systems that we build and live within." Eventually, Davenport locates Bouvia's sisters, Teresa and Rebecca, and convinces them to appear on camera to talk about their sibling, who died in 2014. Encouraging the pair to open up about Bouvia was not easy, but Davenport's authenticity and transparency helped win them over. "Their main concern was that Elizabeth's reputation and decisions were going to be questioned again, and we ensured that was not our intention," Davenport says. "Basically, trying to, with the audience, meet them where they were at, and not force them." As Teresa and Rebecca share stories of Bouvia's life after the 1980s while the film visits people who have used or are considering using MAiD, it becomes clear that assisted dying may have its place in the medical system. However, as Davenport sees it, discussions about it should be handled carefully when the focus is on people with disabilities. "We should be asking, 'How can we enable disabled people to live?' And support them, and allow them opportunities," he says. "There's this sinister perspective that we are a burden, that we suck up money. So there's this underlying incentive for the health industry to allow people to choose assisted suicide." He continues, "What I would encourage people to do is to look at how we can better the lives of people with disabilities rather than leave them to die." Near the end of the film, Davenport fills out the application for Canada's MAiD program to see how easy or hard it would be for him to qualify. What starts as a funny exercise becomes scary when he passes with flying colors. He reflects on this and on all the people he has met who have gone down the same path and says he can't imagine how different he would feel about his life without the support, care and passion he has. In one particularly poignant moment, Cassingham agrees that her quality of life would also be greatly reduced without these things, but because she doesn't have a disability, she wouldn't be given the option to die because of it. "Quality of life doesn't have much to do with the abilities of our bodies. When someone becomes disabled or is aging, there's a real grappling with what that means, because society has told us that what makes us productive and able to enjoy life revolves around our bodies and our ability to do certain things," she says. "But for me, I've experienced a real reframing of disability as a natural part of the fabric of human experience." "I'm learning that quality of life resides somewhere else, and it involves the people around you, it involves being loved, and giving love and care," Cassingham adds. "And those are things we all have access to if we live in a society where care is fostered and relationships and interdependency is valued and fostered." While Bouvia's life after her landmark court case quickly fell out of the news cycle, Davenport's film reappraises the right-to-die question — through the sweet recollections of Bouvia's sisters, home video footage and the context of many others who are choosing to die or questioning why it is even an option. Life After is now playing in select theaters Read the original article on People
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
A Disabled Woman Wanted to Starve Herself to Death. The State Wouldn't Let Her. A New Doc Looks at Her Case (Exclusive)
NEED TO KNOW Director Reid Davenport's new documentary Life After examines the right-to-die question through the experiences of disabled people Reid, who has cerebral palsy, uses the case of Elizabeth Bouvia, a young woman with cerebral palsy, as the centerpiece of the film Bouvia was denied the right to starve herself in 1983Allowing a person with a dire health diagnosis or an unbearable level of pain to die might seem like an act of mercy to some people. But what would happen if the government were to decide that anyone with a disability deserves the right to die? Filmmaker Reid Davenport confronts this question in his new documentary Life After, primarily through the story of Elizabeth Bouvia, a California woman with cerebral palsy who, at the age of 26, sought the legal right to starve herself to death. This was in 1983, and some TV news broadcasts questioned why someone who was young and beautiful would want to end her life. She said she wanted to die because she hadn't been given the right to live in a society with a healthcare structure that valued the bottom line over her well-being. Davenport, who also has cerebral palsy, and his producing partner at Multitude Films, Colleen Cassingham, kept hearing similar reasoning while making Life After, which is now playing in select theaters. Bouvia articulated her argument well when her case moved to court — she was in pain, tired and bogged down by bureaucracy — but the state eventually sided with the hospital, which said it could not betray its oath to first do no harm. So what happened to this so-called pioneer in the right-to-die movement after the case ended? That is the question Davenport set out to answer when he started working on Life After. Framed by Bouvia's story, the documentary explores expanded Canadian policies that allow nearly anyone with a disability to apply to die, why some disabled people have made the tough choice to die and how advocates for MAiD (medical aid in dying) defend the expansion of the policies from people with a terminal diagnosis to anyone with a disability. The film amplifies varied voices and points of view, like Melissa Hickson, who says her husband Michael Hickson was denied lifesaving care because doctors decided his quality of life was too low, and Catherine Frazee, a professor who posits that you cannot address human suffering by killing people. One participant, Michal Kaliszan, details how he considered assisted dying after his mother, who was his primary caretaker, died, and he could no longer afford the care he needed. While working on the documentary, Cassingham had to navigate a shift in taking right-to-die activism at face value as progressivism to fully understanding the implications of applying it to all disabled people. "I thought assisted dying was really about personal choice and bodily autonomy, values that I'm deeply committed to," she tells PEOPLE. "And in learning from Reid and in working on this film, I realized there's so much more to the picture of how it actually works in society, and it's deeply linked with the ways that we do and don't value certain lives, and a deep-seated ableism that underpins so much of society." Over the course of Life After, as Davenport searches for Bouvia's family and seeks to find out if she is still living, two themes emerge: that the focus on right-to-die policies ignores that so many disabled people are not given the right to live and that any one person deciding what a good quality of life is for someone else can be tricky. "The themes at the heart of this film are not niche; they're not particular to the disability community. Things like healthcare, isolation and the way that we value other human lives are universal," Cassingham says. "Everyone has a stake in the fight for a society that is invested in care and in upholding each other's dignity in the systems that we build and live within." Eventually, Davenport locates Bouvia's sisters, Teresa and Rebecca, and convinces them to appear on camera to talk about their sibling, who died in 2014. Encouraging the pair to open up about Bouvia was not easy, but Davenport's authenticity and transparency helped win them over. "Their main concern was that Elizabeth's reputation and decisions were going to be questioned again, and we ensured that was not our intention," Davenport says. "Basically, trying to, with the audience, meet them where they were at, and not force them." As Teresa and Rebecca share stories of Bouvia's life after the 1980s while the film visits people who have used or are considering using MAiD, it becomes clear that assisted dying may have its place in the medical system. However, as Davenport sees it, discussions about it should be handled carefully when the focus is on people with disabilities. "We should be asking, 'How can we enable disabled people to live?' And support them, and allow them opportunities," he says. "There's this sinister perspective that we are a burden, that we suck up money. So there's this underlying incentive for the health industry to allow people to choose assisted suicide." He continues, "What I would encourage people to do is to look at how we can better the lives of people with disabilities rather than leave them to die." Near the end of the film, Davenport fills out the application for Canada's MAiD program to see how easy or hard it would be for him to qualify. What starts as a funny exercise becomes scary when he passes with flying colors. He reflects on this and on all the people he has met who have gone down the same path and says he can't imagine how different he would feel about his life without the support, care and passion he has. In one particularly poignant moment, Cassingham agrees that her quality of life would also be greatly reduced without these things, but because she doesn't have a disability, she wouldn't be given the option to die because of it. "Quality of life doesn't have much to do with the abilities of our bodies. When someone becomes disabled or is aging, there's a real grappling with what that means, because society has told us that what makes us productive and able to enjoy life revolves around our bodies and our ability to do certain things," she says. "But for me, I've experienced a real reframing of disability as a natural part of the fabric of human experience." "I'm learning that quality of life resides somewhere else, and it involves the people around you, it involves being loved, and giving love and care," Cassingham adds. "And those are things we all have access to if we live in a society where care is fostered and relationships and interdependency is valued and fostered." While Bouvia's life after her landmark court case quickly fell out of the news cycle, Davenport's film reappraises the right-to-die question — through the sweet recollections of Bouvia's sisters, home video footage and the context of many others who are choosing to die or questioning why it is even an option. Life After is now playing in select theaters Read the original article on People
New York Times
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
‘Life After' Review: What the End Means
Near the end of his feature debut, the self-shot 'I Didn't See You There' (2022), the director Reid Davenport expresses a wish: 'I hope this is my last personal film,' he says. But 'Life After,' his new documentary, couldn't be anything but. Davenport starts with a hook: What happened to Elizabeth Bouvia, who, beginning in 1983, was the subject of a highly publicized legal battle in California? Bouvia, who had cerebral palsy, as Davenport does, had sought to starve herself to death with medical supervision — something the courts initially did not allow. Forty years later, Davenport can find no record of her death. Is she still alive? Has her perspective changed? His investigation is fueled in part by parallels he sees in his life. When he and his producer, Colleen Cassingham, locate Bouvia's sisters, they learn that her trajectory was more complicated than the news media's framing revealed. But 'Life After' also dives into broader questions about the legalization of medical assistance in death. The director makes clear that he does not oppose that choice, but he is concerned that messages of rejection from society and the economics of long-term care might push disabled people toward that end. He casts a particularly harsh spotlight on Canada's commercialization of this issue. ('Don't miss out on your chance to have an assisted death,' says a video that he and Cassingham watch that urges viewers to make arrangements early.) Davenport, upon learning he would qualify for assisted suicide if he lived in Canada, wonders if he would see his life differently if he didn't have such positive support from family and friends. He has felt alienated at times, but so have many people, yet only those with disabilities are subtly encouraged to consider a state-sanctioned demise. 'Life After' doesn't equivocate; neither does it offer easy answers. It tackles a thorny topic in a challenging way, with the tenderness, complexity and — notwithstanding Davenport's earlier wish — the personal perspective it deserves. Life AfterNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes. In theaters.
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Doc Talk Podcast: ‘Life After' Filmmaker Reid Davenport And Producer Colleen Cassingham Investigate Groundbreaking Right-To-Die Case
One of the most significant talents to emerge in documentary film in recent years is Reid Davenport, who broke through in 2022 with his debut feature film I Didn't See You There. It chronicled his experience as a disabled person attempting to navigate a society that typically meets disability with fear, ignorance and loathing. 'I have cerebral palsy. I would like people to see that my diagnosis is not my biggest obstacle,' he has said. 'My biggest obstacle is people's response to my diagnosis.' More from Deadline Doc Talk Podcast Debates Early Oscar Contenders: Who's Leading The Best Documentary Charge And Who Belongs In Contention Snubbed By Oscars, 'Will & Harper,' 'Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story' Score Multiple Emmy Nominations Doc Talk Podcast Goes Upriver For Riveting Conversation About Newly Restored 'Hearts Of Darkness,' One Of Greatest Documentaries Ever Davenport says he makes documentaries 'from an overtly political perspective.' That's true of his latest film Life After, which won a Special Jury Award at the Sundance Film Festival where it premiered earlier this year. The film produced by Colleen Cassingham opens at Film Forum in New York City on Friday, with additional in-person and virtual screenings in other cities in the coming weeks. On the new edition of Deadline's Doc Talk podcast, Davenport and Cassingham join us for a compelling conversation about the film and how it reframes the debate over the 'right-to-die' movement. Sometimes referred to as 'death with dignity' or 'medical aid in dying,' the movement is often characterized as a compassionate option to end suffering for those with terminal conditions. But behind it, Davenport sees the lurking specter of eugenics, a discredited pseudoscience that proposed the enhancement of the collective gene pool by eliminating undesirables. Nazi Germany put it into active practice. Davenport and Cassingham tell us why the case of Elizabeth Bouvia became critical to the film. In the 1980s, Bouvia, who had cerebral palsy, sued in California for the right to end her life with assistance from a hospital, at a time when California had no law permitting that (in 2016 the state passed the California End of Life Option Act). Ostensibly, her case might sound like an argument in favor of euthanasia, but the filmmakers investigated further and came to a startling conclusion about why Bouvia wanted to end her life – a conclusion that illuminates the reality of how we treat people with disabilities and the value, or lack thereof, that we assign to their lives. (Davenport also explains why 60 Minutes correspondent Mike Wallace makes an archive cameo appearance in Life After, interviewing Bouvia bedside in a way the director describes as 'creepy.'). That's on the new episode of Doc Talk, hosted by Oscar winner John Ridley (12 Years a Slave, Shirley) and Matt Carey, Deadline's documentary editor. The show is a production of Deadline and Ridley's Nō to the episode above or on major podcast platforms including Spotify, iHeart and Apple. Best of Deadline Everything We Know About Amazon's 'Verity' Movie So Far 'Street Fighter' Cast: Who's Who In The Live-Action Arcade Film Adaption 2025-26 Awards Season Calendar: Dates For Emmys, Oscars, Grammys & More
Hamilton Spectator
24-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Hamilton Spectator
‘We'll just make our own films': Disability rights advocates in spotlight at Hot Docs
Reid Davenport says he began making documentaries to confront the ableism he faced every day. When a college adviser discouraged him from applying for a study abroad program in Florence because the city wasn't wheelchair accessible, Davenport responded by picking up a camera. The resulting film, 2013's 'Wheelchair Diaries,' explored the lack of accessibility in Europe. 'It feels good to take pain and turn it into art. It's cathartic and relieves some of the difficult memories,' says Davenport, who has cerebral palsy. The New York-based filmmaker now counts himself among a growing wave of creators challenging how people with disabilities are seen and spoken about in media. That shift is especially apparent at this year's Hot Docs festival, where stories about disability rights are in the spotlight. Programming director Heather Haynes says the festival received a record number of submissions centering voices of people with disabilities. Among the highlights is the international premiere of Davenport's 'Life After,' which delves into the complexities of assisted suicide from a disability-rights lens, examining Canada's medical assistance in dying (MAID) program. 'Disabled people have been the subject of documentaries since the inception of documentaries, but those documentaries have literally subjugated them,' says Davenport. 'I think there's a groundswell of disabled people who want to take the narrative back and are sick of talking about the physicalities of their disabilities, and would rather talk about the unnecessary ableism they face that is embedded in society.' Other standouts are Shoshannah Stern's 'Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore,' a portrait of the Oscar-winning Deaf actress and her trailblazing journey, and the international premiere of Nyle DiMarco and Davis Guggenheim's 'Deaf President Now!,' which revisits a 1988 student-led protest in Washington, D.C. that became a landmark moment for accessibility rights in the U.S. Homegrown selections include Lulu Wei's short 'A Stop Gap Measure,' which follows Toronto disability activist Luke Anderson on his fight to make Canada more accessible. Programmers and filmmakers say there is a larger shift in the documentary world that's fuelled by increased access, emerging support programs and long-overdue recognition of those who've been left out of the frame. Elspeth Arbow, a key programmer behind this year's Hot Docs slate, notes much of that momentum can be traced back to 2020, when the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis by a police officer sparked a cultural reckoning around race, power and representation. 'There was certainly this swell of interest in supporting equity-deserving groups or people that have been systematically disadvantaged or kept out of able-bodied, hegemonic, white-led organizations. A lot of that has fallen away over the past five years, but a lot of it has stayed, too,' Arbow says. The New Brunswick native cites the CBC's AccessCBC program and the National Screen Institute's Disabled Producers Lab as recent Canadian initiatives offering mentorship and financial support to disabled creators. Arbow, who lives with cystic fibrosis and has had two double lung transplants, is operations manager of the Disability Screen Office, a non-profit that launched in 2022 with the goal of eliminating accessibility barriers in the Canadian screen industry. She notes that people with disabilities have long been portrayed on screen through a lens of 'spectacle and voyeurism,' but the community has now reached a 'tipping point,' no longer willing to accept those narratives. 'Now that people are listening to disabled folks, we can say, 'The representation we have is really not very good. And if you call us disrespectful or unappreciative, we'll just make our own films,'' Arbow says. Anderson credits the 2020 documentary 'Crip Camp' as a galvanizing moment. Helmed by James LeBrecht and Nicole Newnham, the film traces the origins of the disability rights movement and, according to Anderson, helped bring much-needed attention to the fight for inclusion. 'A Stop Gap Measure' chronicles Anderson's creation of the StopGap Foundation, a non-profit that installs brightly colored ramps for single-step storefronts across Canada to raise awareness about the need for a barrier-free society. 'The disability community isn't going to settle for HR policies that are discriminatory, built-in environments that say that we don't belong or attitudinal spaces that aren't inclusive,' says Anderson, who has used a wheelchair since a mountain biking injury in 2002. 'We're tired of not being heard or seen. And there's a real close-knit community of disability activists who are really motivated to speak up.' In 'Life After,' Davenport interviews Canadian Michal Kaliszan, who, after losing his mother and struggling with limited care options due to his spinal muscular atrophy, considers MAID. Davenport says his film is truly about how 'radically under-supported' disabled people are in modern society. 'I think every disabled person experiences ableism, and it's so acute that we have a disproportionate amount of disabled people who either commit suicide or seek suicide,' he says. 'One of the old tenets of disability studies is that disabled people aren't impaired by their bodies, but they're impaired by society's reactions to their bodies. That's all you really need to know.' This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 24, 2025.
