MISS YOU CAN DO IT directed by award-winning documentary director Ron Davis will premeire on HBO on June 24th. MISS YOU CAN DO IT chronicles Abbey Curran, Miss Iowa USA 2008 and the first woman with a disability to compete at the Miss USA Pageant, and eight girls with various physical and intellectual disabilities as the girls participate in Abbey’s Miss You Can Do It Pageant. Abbey founded the annual Miss You Can Do It Pageant in 2004 and girls and their families travel from all around the country to participate in this one night where their inner beauty and abilities reign.

Diagnosed with cerebral palsy at age two, Abbey Curran never accepted her physical limitations. She admits her disability comes with lifelong challenges, but none that hold her back, playing sports (she “just falls more”) and driving a car with a special steering wheel and brake. Curran’s resilience and determination to pursue her dreams led her to become the first woman with disabilities to compete in the Miss USA Pageant in 2008.

Miss You Can Do It highlights the extraordinary work Curran is doing with the pageant she founded. Curran and a team of enthusiastic volunteers give participants a chance to be celebrated for all they are inside, not just defined by what the world sees on the outside. For one special weekend the young girls, along with family and friends, some who have traveled far distances, spend time in an oasis of fun, femininity and celebration.

No one leaves the pageant empty-handed, with each girl receiving a special award. The real winners of the pageant might be the families and friends, who proudly cheer them on from the audience.

Among the girls and families profiled are:

– Five-year-old Tierney, who gleefully zips around in a powered wheelchair in excited anticipation of the pageant, while her mom explains that she’s never walked and will progressively lose movement throughout her body. Tierney has spinal muscular atrophy type II, a slow deterioration of all muscles.

– Natasha, 14, who was born with cerebral palsy and suffers from seizures, and Kenna, her younger sister, who has intellectual disabilities. Despite these challenges, “they are a happy-go-lucky family,” according to their proud parents.

– Precocious six-year-old Ali, who has four best friends, one mischievous and imaginary, and three in their 60s: Judy, Judy and Rock, who enjoy watching Ali’s physical therapy sessions on a horse, which helps with her balance. Ali was born with spina bifida, a hole in the spine that caused paralysis of her lower body.

– Teyanna, a smart and creative preteen, whose mother says that after she was born, a nurse suggested they put her in an institution, but they refused and raised her at home. Teyanna has speech difficulty due to cerebral palsy.

– Seven-year-old Daleney, whose parents say her biggest frustration is her lack of independence. Still, she never shows it, even if she takes 15 minutes to tie her shoelaces. Daleney is a quadriplegic with a spastic form of cerebral palsy, causing her to have too much muscle tone and making her limbs cross her midline when she walks.

– Tiny Meg, who is shy, except when she’s with her brothers. Wanting Meg to have a sister to connect with, her parents adopted Alina, a girl from Ukraine. Both Meg and Alina have Down syndrome.

http://youtu.be/LeKQRcyNuO8

via HBO Docs

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The filmmakers of a documentary about Venus and Serena Williams face a lawsuit filed by the U.S. Tennis Association. In the lawsuit filed Friday, the USTA claims copyright infringement after the filmmakers of VENUS AND SERENA allegedly used unlicensed video footage from the U.S. Open without permission.

The lawsuit states that because the filmmakers never signed the standard agreement or made any payment, the USTA was led to believe the “project had been abandoned..”

According to The New York Times, the unlicensed video footage included an outburst by Serena Williams in the 2009 Open when she yelled obscenities and used threatening language against a line judge.

The documentary was originally released on iTunes in April and in theaters in May. The film is also scheduled to begin airing on Showtime on July 1.

Filmmakers Maiken Baird and Michelle Major have dismissed the accusations, calling the lawsuit a shameful effort to interfere. “In trying to censor this film about the Williams sisters,” they told The New York Times, “the U.S.T.A. is simply making up an agreement that never existed — we shot footage at the U.S. Open with the U.S.T.A.’s permission and of course never agreed to pay them for our own work.”

http://youtu.be/YvMWjtQN5HU

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The Weinstein Company released the trailer for the upcoming documentary “SALINGER,” about the notoriously reclusive “Catcher in the Rye” author J.D. Salinger. 

Directed by Shane Solerno who co-wrote Oliver Stone’s 2012 “Savages,” SALINGER features interviews with 150 subjects including Salinger’s friends, colleagues and members of his inner circle who have never spoken on the record before as well as film footage, photographs and other material that has never been seen.  Additionally, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Edward Norton, John Cusack, Danny DeVito, John Guare, Martin Sheen, David Milch, Robert Towne, Tom Wolfe, E.L. Doctorow, Gore Vidal and Pulitzer Prize winners A. Scott Berg and Elizabeth Frank talk about Salinger’s influence on their lives, their work and the broader culture.  The film is the first work to get beyond the Catcher in the Rye author’s meticulously built up wall:  his childhood, painstaking work methods, marriages, private world and the secrets he left behind after his death in 2010.

The Weinstein Company anticipates a September 6 release date.

http://youtu.be/5IPsCA6ttbc

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[caption id="attachment_4116" align="alignnone" width="550"]OXYANA[/caption]

Sean Dunne makes his feature-film-directing debut with the documentary, OXYANA which looks at the OxyContin epidemic in the West Virginia town of Oceana. OXYANA had it’s world premiere earlier this year at the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival, where the film received a Special Jury Mention in the World Documentary Competition, as well as a nod for Best New Documentary Director for filmmaker Sean Dunne. OXYANA will be released by the filmmakers for sale starting July 1, 2013.

Struggling with poverty and unemployment after the demise of its only industry—the mining trade that had historically nourished the local economy—Oceana, West Virginia, has become the epicenter of a drug scourge devastating towns across the country and leaving many good and honest communities forsaken. Known among its residents as “Oxyana” after the OxyContin epidemic quietly washing over this sleepy Appalachian town, Oceana is a tragically real example of the insidious spread of drug dependency in the United States today. 

[caption id="attachment_4117" align="alignnone" width="550"]OXYANA[/caption]

Set against the eerie backdrop of abandoned coal mines within the lush West Virginia landscape, to the melody of Deer Tick’s haunting score, Sean Dunne’s unflinchingly intimate documentary probes the lives of Oceana’s afflicted. He turns the camera on its many residents, allowing them to tell their stories in their own words and homes to illuminate how their unique stories have led them each to the same tragic inevitability of pill addiction. Dunne eschews the high-drama mode in which drug dependency stories are often framed in favor of a simple, sympathetic immersion in the day-to-day experience of a town living in the harsh grip of addiction.

“We recognized when we set out to make OXYANA just how sensitive the subject matter was, but once we started showing the film at festivals, we saw an urgent need to get this message out to a wider audience,” says Dunne. “By distributing the film ourselves through our website, we can quickly get the film to those who want and need to see it and hopefully spark a dialogue about prescription drug abuse in this country.”

Sean Dunne has directed five previous short documentaries, including The Archive (nominated for an Emmy in 2011), Man in Van, The Bowler, Stray Dawg and American Juggalo (named documentary of the year for 2011 by the website, Short of the Week). Hailed as the “master of fringe Americana” for his ability to realistically capture half-mythical corners of the country, Dunne’s approach to documentary is to give his subjects the ease and opportunity to find their own voices and his viewers the freedom to form their own conclusions.

http://youtu.be/DW90pk0_NVs

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