http://digital.montrealgazette.com/epaper/viewer.aspx

HE GOT UP AND WALKED
Montrealer's prize- winning film tracks his journey back from severe
brain injury
DONNA NEBENZAHL
T HE GAZETTE

Please see TBI, Page D3 
The camera loves Paul Nadler. When the Montreal director, writer and subject of
one of this country's most award-winning documentaries appears on the screen, it
lights up with his energy. This is quite a feat, since the film tells the story
of his struggle with a brain injury so serious that his family was advised at
one point to take him off life support.


Their refusal and his laborious struggle to reclaim his life - even as he looks
back at the man he once was - are skillfully rendered in Braindamadj'd . Take
II, winner of one of this year's George Foster Peabody Awards in the U.S., often
cited as the most prestigious awards in electronic media.


In Canada, Braindamadj'd won two Geminis in 2006 in the documentary category for
best biography and best direction. It has also scooped up prizes at various
international festivals, including the International Independent Film Festival
in Brussels, The Other Film Festival in Australia, and INPUT Taiwan, the
international showcase of public television.


Nadler, now 43, says he made the documentary about his traumatic brain injury
(TBI) because he wanted to commit to film the mountain he climbed after he was
severely injured in a car accident in Egypt at 32. He beat the odds: he learned
to walk again, to talk, to function.


See page 39 


TBI
He didn't want a ' new me.' The old one suited him fine
From page D1 
"In rehab, I decided I didn't want to be a dishwasher or an envelope stuffer. I
have defied the prediction of what was told to me, and what was in all the
literature. In TBI, you're supposed to let your old self die. I waited for the
new me, but I discovered that I love my own life. I just see me, just a Paul who
has been through quite an experience."


We meet at the offices of Apartment 11 Productions, the company that produced
his film. I'm asked to be exactly on time for the meeting since Nadler gets
anxious when anyone's late.


But I know this already. I have watched the documentary: the fully engaged young
man who travelled all over the world documenting his life on video, the car door
that represents his last memories before the accident, his parents talking about
their fear as he lay in a coma, and their elation when he awoke, his struggle to
move his body, to walk and talk, his determination to try snowboarding and
mountain climbing, his time at UQAM where he completed his master's in
communication.


Now, he needs to be on time and he needs time to do things. "This is what I had
to get used to," he says as he walks slowly down the hall to be photographed,
his gait steady but slightly off-centre. "Once I went 1,000 miles an hour."


And he thinks about everything, even lifting his legs as he moves. "Before I do
anything, I have to tell myself to do it," he says. He thinks about what he's
saying, too, yet he speaks eloquently, forcefully, his speech full of capital
letters and exclamation marks.


Another change, he says, is in his appreciation of life. "I think I'm more
grounded and in touch with my environment. Before, I was more focused on myself,
my career, my possessions."


By 1999, as his rehabilitation progressed, Nadler decided to write a script for
a documentary. "It was a bad script," he says, "but it was a beginning."


The film, written during the summer while he worked on his masters, was shot in
one year and edited in six months. It was a cathartic experience for one who had
been well known as a TV packaging designer and director before the accident.


"I made this film to see if I could do it, could still be in the media. My
biggest fear was how to handle being on the set and in the editing bay. Then I
got there and knew instantly who to talk to, how to guide, how to lead subtly
and how to get what you want."


He was elated that it came so naturally. But for a year after the film was
released, nothing happened. "I was so disappointed," he says. "Then, KABOOM!" In
2006, more than a dozen awards came his way, and he found himself doing
something he never thought possible after the accident - travelling. He went to
Taiwan, Belgium, Australia, New Zealand, India, France, Spain, Brazil and Japan,
where the film took the Grand Prix Japan Prize, an international educational
program contest.


"I never anticipated the success. It's wonderful, to create something that can
affect the world, never mind that I cowrote and directed it - and I'm the
subject!"


What is significant is that the awards are a recognition of excellence, he says.
"This is my first film since the accident and I'm so proud and happy. At INPUT
in Taiwan, with my peers around, they gave me a standing ovation! I was so
touched, I was speechless."


The film moves people for two reasons, he believes. "First it's universal: man
vs. the mountain." Second? "I happen to be a likeable character. I showed it
all, I really wanted this to be honest, warts and all. I'm SHOCKED at how
brutally honest I am. That's what gives it power: the fact I am so honest, I
reveal so much. It's the core, besides the fact it's shot and edited so well."


His revelations are poignant, funny, sometimes heartbreaking. The film documents
a piece of performance art by Nadler, a one-man show called Nadler's Tale.


"It's the story of a prince who meets a woman who is a witch. In rejecting his
advances, she turns him into a worm and puts him underground, where he is
spineless and boneless. But he works his way up and rips his body apart to form
arms and legs."


Whenever you speak to someone who has gone through TBI, he says, "please be
aware that this person is lonely and, because of that, may be cold and bitter."


This week, Nadler will be screening the film and telling his story at the
Alberta Brain Injury Conference in Edmonton.


"A very important theme of this film is to be yourself and go your own way
despite what 'the professionals' say," he tells me, holding up his fingers to
show that the words are in quotes.


"After the accident, I was lost, a fragile little deer in the headlights. They
said 'you are this or that' - and maybe despite and because of it, the biggest
'f--- you' I could have given the world was to be who I was."


He's lucky, he says, that the Internet puts the world at his fingertips. Plus,
people's openness to, and awareness of, the handicapped is huge, even though
they are still stigmatized in many ways. But as he points out: "I'm not actually
visibly that f----d up. I'm a fake disabled person and a fake normal person. I'm
sitting on the fence."


What makes this fence-sitter sit up taller? "I got into the media to effect
change and move people and I'm so HAPPY that I did. Did you notice that the word
happy was very good? I practised before I came ."



===========================

Canadian Jewish News
Paul Nadler expresses the rage and loneliness associated with his long
rehabilitation from traumatic brain injury in a solo performance he created.

www.cjnews.com/viewarticle.asp?id=8643 . Cached page 
BORDC: Sanders-Paul-Conyers-Otter-Nadler amendment
BORDC's mission is to organize and support an effective, national grassroots
movement to restore ... Sanders-Paul-Conyers-Otter-Nadler amendment to the
Commerce, Justice, State and ... 


www.apartment11.tv/en/news/press/2006_02_13.jsp . Cached page 
CBC News: The Lens: Feature Story
Paul Nadler has a bad attitude about bad attitudes. Ten years ago, Montrealer
Paul Nadler was a creative maverick - snowboarding, rock-climbing and scuba
diving, taking part in all-night play-writing ... 

www.cbc.ca/thelens/program_140306.html . Cached page 
Filmmakers :: Smiley Documentary Film Distribution Ltd
Smiley Documentary Film Distribution is Australasia's premier boutique dedicated
documentary film ... Paul Nadler. Paul Nadler, the subject of Braindamadj'd.Take
II, was a firebrand artist in ... 

www.smileyfilmdistribution.com/filmdetails.php?id=61&type=2 . Cached page 

Braindamadj'd ... Take II is available on DVD from Apartment 11 Productions.
Contact Mindy Laxer at 514-282-0776, Local 10, or [log in to unmask] For more
information, please go to the website www.apartment11.tv. The film is
tentatively scheduled to be broadcast June 5 on CBC Newsworld to coincide with
the June 4 Peabody Awards ceremony in New York.

C The Gazette (Montreal) 2007



 


 

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