New Film Highlights Jamaican Man’s Battle With the Deadly Disease – ALS (Video)
After being diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) at the age of 43, a Civil Technician is left by his family to the sole care of his wife to fight the debilitating disease.
The film titled ‘Denis’ is the true story of Jamaican Denis Mckenzie, a proud and independent family man who at age 43 is diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) which eventually renders him almost completely paralysed and speechless. With the assistance of his wife, he tries to fight the aggressive and emaciating disease.
It was selected for both the 2015 Jamaica Film Festival and the 2015 Trinidad & Tobago Film Festival and is being shown this Friday, July 10 at JAMPRO at 7pm at the Jamaica film festival.
The Jamaican Blogs™ was able to get in touch with the film’s director- Gabrielle Blackwood to find out why she decided to make a film about Denis.
“I decided to do a short film to help out a family friend, but after starting it I just kept going until it became a feature length documentary.”
“It was originally just supposed to be a short piece to raise funds to help the Mckenzie family but the aim now is to bring awareness about the struggles that people in general with ties to the disease have to go through. So it’s not just the person with the illness but their family members/support system”, she also added.
Gabrielle is a young Jamaican Director and Director of Photography who has worked on short films, documentaries and commercials in both Jamaica and New Zealand. Her short film ‘Grave Digger’ won the Geoff Evans Award for Excellence in Screen Production in New Zealand and was selected for the 2012 Trinidad & Tobago Film Festival and went on to be screened at the 2012 Havana International Film Festival.
She has lectured at both the University of the West Indies (Mona) and the University of Technology Jamaica over the last two years, is also a Film Instructor for the UWI Film project and course writer for two film courses offered at UWI (Mona).
Born in Jamaica, Gabrielle who has her MA in Screen Production, currently freelances and resides in Kingston as a Director/DoP and is currently working on two screenplays.
See the trailer for Denis Below:
Omg…..what is man and what is life? Your health can just deteriorate like that in the wink of an eye. He’s only 43.