Autism through cinema: body language and the illegible body (360G-Wellcome-209795_Z_17_Z)

This research engages the history and practice of cinema as an unexplored framework through which autism can be contextualized as an evolving discourse of body language, and repositioned as a condition with benefits. Autism is widely known as a disorder in which communicative practices and embodiment are experienced in an idiosyncratic way, with the effect of isolating the autistic person from communal social interaction. Proponents of the neurodiversity movement have critiqued the framing of autism as an impairment deviating from the standard practice of verbal modes of expression underpinned by bodily communication. This contested binary of an a-typical and a-social embodied practice, versus a socially fluid communicative capacity, is a less assured division when viewed through the prism of cinema. The goals of the project are: To use film practice to elucidate the potential of autism to expand understandings of bodily communication. To examine autism as gesture and trace its changing modalities on film during the twentieth century. To compare autism as it appears in medical and commercial film during the twentieth century to identify binaries of legible/illegible body language. To work with autistic individuals to develop an alternative film language inclusive of the neurodiverse population.