A new film sea­son explores the rela­tion­ship between autism and cinema

What do autism and cin­e­ma mean to you? Grow­ing up as an autis­tic per­son in the ear­ly 2000s, I became used to the idea of only ever see­ing myself through a neu­rotyp­i­cal lens. Non-autis­tic actors por­trayed the con­di­tion in sto­ries medi­at­ed through non-autis­tic char­ac­ters, often a hag­gard sib­ling in the likes of Rain Man and Mol­ly, the lat­ter about attempt­ing to ​“cure” some­one of their autism via exper­i­men­tal brain surgery.

The idea of cin­e­ma being used, to para­phrase Roger Ebert, as an empa­thy machine when it came to peo­ple like me felt far-fetched. The word ​‘autis­tic’ became a neg­a­tive verb in my life, cul­ti­vat­ed from stereo­types per­pet­u­at­ed by films such as both afore­men­tioned titles.

It is there­fore a great relief to see the Bar­bi­can pro­gram­ming ​‘Autism and Cin­e­ma: An Explo­ration of Neu­ro­di­ver­si­ty’, a sea­son devot­ed to explor­ing autism through cin­e­ma in a more enlight­en­ing man­ner. The sea­son incor­po­rates a diverse range of doc­u­men­tary, short form, avant-garde and nar­ra­tive fea­tures, unpack­ing com­plex themes of iden­ti­ty and how a neu­ro­di­verse per­spec­tive can be explored through the mechan­ics of film­mak­ing rather than glanced at from a distance.

Although the major­i­ty of the pro­gramme is helmed by neu­rotyp­i­cal artists, the choic­es them­selves reflect an effort to put neu­ro­di­verse voic­es front and cen­tre. This is exem­pli­fied in clos­ing film Keep the Change, an under-seen Amer­i­can rom-com direct­ed by Rachel Israel which cen­tres on two autis­tic adults played by autis­tic actors Bran­don Polan­sky and Saman­tha Elisofan.

The blunt frank­ness of Polansky’s humour could, in less­er hands, be played more broad­ly as a dis­tanc­ing device. Cred­it to Israel for invest­ing us in the leads’ rela­tion­ship by depict­ing them no dif­fer­ent­ly than any oth­er rom-com cou­pling. To see autis­tic indi­vid­u­als rep­re­sent­ed as capa­ble of love, sex and oth­er facets of adult life is noth­ing short of refresh­ing and Israel’s direc­tion pre­vents a poten­tial­ly mawk­ish set-up from ever feel­ing too contrived.

Roger Ross Williams’ doc­u­men­tary Life, Ani­mat­ed offers a deep­er dive into visu­al­ly rep­re­sent­ing how an autis­tic per­son makes sense of social com­plex­i­ties through cin­e­ma. Although more con­ven­tion­al than some­thing like The Rea­son I Jump, its explo­ration of echolalia – the phe­nom­e­non of repeat­ing phras­es out of con­text, often from sec­ondary sources – is one rarely dis­cussed out­side of the occa­sion­al zinger in more main­stream films such as Baby Dri­ver.

To me, there will always be some­thing per­son­al­ly res­o­nant about see­ing some­one use film as a way to make sense of the con­fu­sion of life at an ear­ly age. It is through rep­re­sen­ta­tion such as that in both Israel and Williams’ films that will pave the way towards negat­ing the com­mon mis­con­cep­tions around autism that are baked into pop­u­lar culture.

Most of the sea­son is com­prised of sim­i­lar­ly themed mate­r­i­al, includ­ing Mick Jackson’s 2010 biopic of autis­tic rights activist Tem­ple Grandin, and Jean-Pierre Daniel, Fer­nand Deligny and Josée Manenti’s 1971 anti-insti­tu­tion­al ther­a­py docu­d­ra­ma Le Moin­dre geste. The deci­sion to include Mul­hol­land Dri­ve, per­plex­ing as it may seem, is in keep­ing with the season’s aim of explor­ing per­spec­tives on cin­e­ma adja­cent to neurodiversity.

Upon revis­it­ing David Lynch’s film, it is strik­ing how neat­ly struc­tured it is with­in its own rhythm; its con­stant elu­sive­ness is often cit­ed as the rea­son for its endur­ing sta­tus. To get the most out of Mul­hol­land Dri­ve is to accept it on its own terms rather than attempt­ing to seek a sin­gle pre­scrip­tive read­ing. As an autis­tic per­son whose mind often races to con­struct sev­er­al mean­ings out of one image, there’s an odd reas­sur­ance to be gleaned here with­in Lynch’s oppres­sive atmos­phere of dread.

‘Autism and Cin­e­ma’ is run in part­ner­ship with The Cen­tre of Film and Ethics at Queen Mary Uni­ver­si­ty. Janet Har­bord, Pro­fes­sor of Film at Queen Mary, has stat­ed that, ​“The autis­tic capac­i­ty for visu­al think­ing… for bring­ing into the fore­ground what is often lost to the back­ground, char­ac­terise this series of films, demon­strat­ing an his­tor­i­cal affin­i­ty between autism and cinema.”

Look­ing at this sea­son offers not only a coun­ter­point to my pre­vi­ous feel­ings, prov­ing that there is a ​“his­tor­i­cal affin­i­ty between autism and cin­e­ma”, but also hope for the future of neu­ro­di­verse rep­re­sen­ta­tion in film.

For more infor­ma­tion and to book tick­ets vis­it bar​bi​can​.org​.uk