director:
Tom Puchniak
producer:
Alan Handel
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Is
Love Enough?
45 minutes / documentary / 2002
/ USA
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here for preview
Can a person with a mental disability be a good parent? A few
generations ago, many people with mental retardation were locked
up in institutions and sterilized to prevent them from having
children. Today, people with disabilities are demanding the
same rights as everyone else. Can someone who has the mental
age of a teenager safely care for a child? This film takes a
rare look at the controversial subject of parents with intellectual
disabilities and their children.
Tom Puchniak
- director
Tom Puchniak is a Montreal filmaker whose career spans more
than 30 years. He spent 15 years with CBC radio as a journalist
and producer, doing reports and documentaries on everything
from whale music to the existence of fate. He then moved to
television as a current affairs and arts producer. For the past
17 years he has been a freelance researcher, writer and director
on documentary films as diverse as street children in India,
women's struggle for equality, and the rise of the global assembly
line using third world labour.
He has won Canada's prestigious Gemini award for his research
work and his film on psychiatry has garnered documentary awards
in the United States and Canada.
He was inspired and moved by the intellectually challenged parents
whom he met while filming "Is Love Enough?"
Alan Handel - producer
Alan is one of Canada's leading documentary filmmakers and an
award winning television producer. He has worked for the Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation from 1974-1986 and in 1985 became an
independent producer. His productions have been nominated twice
for the Gemini Award as best documentary of the year on Canadian
Television, and have won numerous international awards. His
films have been broadcast around the world on PBS, NBC and BBC,
among others.
Filmakers Library has been
distributing quality documentaries for over 35 years in the
educational market. They have a collection of over 800 titles
in such areas as psychology, sociology, African-American studies,
women studies, global issues, disabilities, aging, gender, mental
health and many more subjects. Many have won awards in festivals,
both nationally and internationally. This year, as in other
previous years, they are pleased that one of their films was
an Academy Award nominee. All of their videos are listed on
the website www.filmakers.com
and are available for rental or sale to educational institutions
and agencies.
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