My Sister's Keepers
This is a very personal documentary about how my family has coped with the intellectual disabilities of my youngest sister. In the process of making it, we opened up some new levels of understanding about each other. It was difficult to make and I used to lie awake many nights during the editing period struggling with what to show. I wondered, for instance, if it was right to show my father crying.
The result is a touching, profoundly intimate film that has hit home with more people than I thought possible. Many viewers have told me that they related strongly to this piece because they had a family member who was chronically ill or had a mental illness or was an alcoholic. My Sister's Keepers went way beyond the issue of intellectual disabilities and plunged into family politics.
This documentary was first broadcast on TVOntario. It runs 52 minutes.
My Sister's Keepers is distributed as an educational version in two 28-minute parts under the title A Family Healing by Kinetic Inc., www.kineticvideo.com. They also distribute a companion video called Community Activists Discuss "A Family Healing."
Synopsis
Some years ago, Michael Connolly's parents asked if he was willing to be guardian for his sister Denise if they were to pass away. Denise was born with intellectual disabilities and since becoming an adult, has had an increasing number of problems. Michael agreed, realizing that he had lived away for so long that he knew very little about his sister's adult life and care. He resolved that if he was someday to take care of Denise's affairs, that he had better learn more about her.
Asking too many questions about Denise's living conditions, her medical treatments and how her parents ran her affairs, often put Michael into difficult confrontations with his parents. Doing research into books and films on people with intellectual disabilities led Michael to conclude that much of it was taken from a rosy point of view. His own family's experience with intellectual disabilities had been rocky and sorrowful. He resolved, with his family's blessing, to make his own film about the realities of living with intellectual disabilities.
What followed were in-depth interviews with siblings and parents on how each saw the family history, what had gone wrong and how things could be different. They discuss institutionalization, parental control, the intervention of professionals and the right to sex for people with intellectual disabilities. The family also tries to come to terms with the fallout from a disturbing sexual assault.
