[il-talk] Fw: 'My Way to Olympia,' a wry, inspiring look at the Paralympics, premieres July 7 on PBS​

[Deborah Kent Stein]

'My Way to Olympia,' a wry, inspiring look at the Paralympics, premieres July 7 on PBS​    

From: POV Communications 
Sent: Thursday, June 12, 2014 11:37 AM
To: dkent5817 at att.net 
Subject: 'My Way to Olympia,' a wry, inspiring look at the Paralympics, premieres July 7 on PBS​

            


Contacts:
POV Communications: Communication at pov.org, 212-989-7425
Cathy Fisher, cfisher at pov.org; Amanda Nguyen, anguyen at pov.org
POV online pressroom: www.pbs.org/pov/pressroom
  
POV’s ‘My Way to Olympia’ Is a Wry and Inspiring Account of the 2012 London Paralympics, Airing Monday, July 7, 2014 on PBS
 
Disabled Film Director Niko von Glasow Discovers a World of Fierce Competition—and a Challenge to His Own Stereotypes


My Way to Olympia: Niko von Glasow. Credit: Niko von Glasow.

Who better to cover the Paralympics, the international sporting event for athletes with physical and intellectual disabilities, than Niko von Glasow, the world's best-known disabled filmmaker? For anyone seeking an insightful and funny documentary, this filmmaker frankly hates sports and thinks the games are “a stupid idea.” Born with severely shortened arms, Niko serves as an endearing guide to London’s Paralympics competition in My Way to Olympia. As he meets a one-handed Norwegian table tennis player, the Rwandan sitting volleyball team, an American archer without arms and a Greek paraplegic boccia player, his own stereotypes about disability and sports get delightfully punctured.
 
My Way to Olympia has its national broadcast premiere on Monday, July 7, 2014 at 10 p.m. (check local listings) on the award-winning POV (Point of View) series on PBS. The film will stream on POV’s website, www.pbs.org/pov/olympia, from July 8-Aug. 6, 2014.
 
Meet the athletes:
 
American archer Matt Stutzman was born without arms and adopted by a family from Kansas. At a young age, Matt learned to do many things with his feet: feed himself, write and ride a bike. He calls himself the “armless archer.” He was a member of the U.S. Paralympic Archery Team at the 2012 London Paralympics, where he won the Silver Medal. Matt lives with his wife and three sons in Fairfield, Iowa.
 
Aida Dahlen trains upwards of 30 hours per week in table tennis alongside able-bodied athletes in Norway, which led her to the Paralympics. Born in Bosnia shortly before war broke out in 1992, she was adopted by Norwegian family at the age of 6. Aida, born without a left forearm and with a left leg amputated at the knee, is studying at the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences.
 
Greek boccia player Greg Polychronidis won the Gold Medal in the BC3 pairs​competition at the 2012 Paralympics.Boccia is one of four sports with no counterpart in the Olympics. Greg has a type of muscular dystrophy. Able to walk and use his arms as a child, he now uses a motorized scooter and has limited movement. He lives in Athens, Greece, where he works as an accountant.
 
Not only is the Rwandan Sitting Volleyball Team the best in Sub-Saharan Africa, they’ve captured international attention as a story of reconciliation. Team members include men from both Hutu and Tutsi ethnicities who sustained their injuries during the Rwandan Genocide in 1994—some who fought against each other during that period. Members see the team as representing Rwanda’s future. When a young Rwandan refuses to talk about his country’s divided past, Niko likens this to his own Jewish father’s refusal to talk about Nazism after World War II.
 
Niko von Glasow (Director/Writer/Co-producer)
Niko von Glasow started his filmmaking career by carrying beer crates and making coffee for Rainer Werner Fassbinder. He went on to study film at New York University and the Lodz Film School in Poland. His first feature film, Wedding Guests (1990), won the German Film Critics Award at the Berlin International Film Festival. He followed up with Marie’s Song (1994) and The Edelweiss Pirates (2004), which won the Grand Prix du Jury at Ciné-Jeune de l’Aisne.
 
My Way to Olympia completes Niko’s trilogy about the lives and feelings of people living with disabilities. For the darkly humorous, politically incorrect NoBody’s Perfect (2008), he convinced 11 other people born with disabilities from thalidomide to pose for a nude calendar. The film won the German Film Award for Best Documentary, brought him worldwide recognition and helped fuel a successful campaign to raise the compensation for the 2,700 surviving victims of thalidomide in Germany. In Everything Will Be Alright (2012), he documents the making of a unique live theatrical production that he wrote and developed.
 
Niko founded the Tibetan Film School and holds talks and workshops on script writing and directing worldwide. He currently divides his time between London and Cologne. He is developing several projects, including Shoot Me. Kiss Me. Cut!, about 12 young filmmakers trying to achieve fame and fortune with their version of Romeo and Juliet, and Girl From Tibet, which tells the story of a young nomadic girl who is accidentally sent to live with a rich, neurotic Jewish family in New York.
 
“Alongside my sports-phobia, I have a well-developed skepticism about disabled people—more specifically, about their neuroses, because they too accurately reflect my own,” says Niko. “I feel (rightly or wrongly) that being physically disabled myself makes it easier to burst the PC bubble and ask disabled people a load of direct, searching and sometimes uncomfortable questions.
 
“So many people, myself included, live in denial of their weaknesses. These athletes are confronting their disabilities head-on, striving to conquer them. You can’t become a Paralympic athlete without totally embracing the ideals of togetherness and shared participation. I found the Paralympics altogether more interesting, fun, human and inclusive than the Olympic Games.”
 
Download photos, embed a trailer and find out more at www.pbs.org/pov/olympia/.  
About POV
Produced by American Documentary, Inc. and now in its 27th season on PBS, the award-winning POV is the longest-running showcase on American television to feature the work of today’s best independent documentary filmmakers. POV has brought more than 365 acclaimed documentaries to millions nationwide. POV films have won every major film and broadcasting award, including 32 Emmys, 17 George Foster Peabody Awards, 10 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards, three Academy Awards® and the Prix Italia. Since 1988, POV has pioneered the art of presentation and outreach using independent nonfiction media to build new communities in conversation about today’s most pressing social issues. Visit www.pbs.org/pov. 
 
Major funding for POV is provided by PBS, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Bertha Foundation, Wyncote Foundation, The Educational Foundation of America, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, Ann Tenenbaum and Thomas H. Lee, and public television viewers. POV is presented by a consortium of public television stations, including KQED San Francisco, WGBH Boston and THIRTEEN in association with WNET.ORG.




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
      Click to view this email in a browser 

      If you no longer wish to receive these emails, please reply to this message with "Unsubscribe" in the subject line or simply click on the following link: Unsubscribe  

      Click here to forward this email to a friend  

      POV | American Documentary
      20 Jay Street Suite 940
      American Documentary | POV
      Brooklyn, New York 11201
      US

      Read the VerticalResponse marketing policy. 
       
 

---
This email is free from viruses and malware because avast! Antivirus protection is active.
http://www.avast.com