Alan Rickman is known for his “Harry Potter” films and Sigourney Weaver for her “Alien” films, but the two are equally compelling in their performances in the new REELAbilities Boston Film Festival, which runs Thursday through Feb. 8 in Boston and other communities.
In the film “Snow Cake,” Rickman, a lonely ex-con, and Weaver, an autistic woman whose daughter has just died in a car accident, develop an unusual, unlikely friendship.
“At first, you think, ‘What is going on?” said Jaymie Saks, executive director of the Boston Jewish Film Festival. “And then you see something important is happening between them.”
“Snow Cake,” at the Museum of Fine Arts on Sunday, is one of four feature films and two documentaries in the festival, the first of its kind in Greater Boston.
“We’ve tried to choose films where the people are not victims or heroes,” said Saks, whose organization is presenting the festival. “They are people with interesting stories to tell and many of the same struggles everyone has. We think the films will raise awareness and let viewers into the lives of people with disabilities.”
The films are about friendship, loss, love, ambition and courage, and the characters’ disabilities include blindness, severe stuttering, autism, cerebral palsy and loss of the use of limbs. They are made in the United States, Canada, England, China and Argentina.
“As awareness of disabilities has grown, they have become more common themes in films,” Saks said. “We thought it would be good to offer the festival in Boston because there are so many wonderful films out there and Boston has a vibrant disabilities community.”
Also at the Museum of Fine Arts on Sunday, the film “Shooting Beauty” is the story of photographer Courtney Bent of New Hampshire and the people with cerebral palsy whom she teaches to use a camera to document their own lives. Bent and one of the film’s stars will answer questions afterwards.
Another documentary, “Warrior Champions,” is about wounded Iraq War veterans who competed for a place in the Para Olympics in China in 2008. It’s shown at 7 p.m. Tuesday at West Newton Cinema. A discussion follows with a veteran who was a Para Olympic athlete.
“It’s inspiring and a real crowd pleaser,” Saks said. “Like all sports movies, it follows the individual stories and keeps up the suspense.”
From China, the film “My Spectacular Theatre” features the relatively new technology of audio description. The story is about a man who finds refuge in a theater where all the patrons are blind, and what they each experience as he describes to them what he sees. It’s shown at 6:30 p.m. Thursday at Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown.
IF YOU GO . . . .
Admission to each film is $10 adults and $9 for seniors and MFA and WGBH members. For more information, call 617-244-9899 or go to www.bjff.org.
Jody Feinberg is at jfeinberg@ledger.com.
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