THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY (LA SCAPHANDRE ET LE PAPILLON) Special Screenings

Jean-Dominique Bauby, the editor of Elle France, is blessed with money, talent, love and children. And then, in a moment, he is suddenly paralyzed from head to toe.

This tragedy, however, doesn’t deter Bauby’s determination to communicate with the world. The latest meditation on the creative process for Julian Schnabel (BASQUIAT, BEFORE NIGHT FALLS) turns Ronald Harwood’s adaptation of Bauby’s best-selling memoir into a celebration of his hero’s two remaining assets: imagination and memory. Some two-thirds of DIVING BELL is shot from a single fixed camera position, with Schnabel transferring the subjective strategies of Brackage’s poetic cinema with astounding grace and skill. The film, which won Schnabel the Best Director prize at Cannes, is as uplifting as you’d expect but there is so much more: cognitive science, unexpected bursts of lyrical imagery and giddy black humor.

Matthieu Amalric (KINGS AND QUEENS, MUNICH) leads an excellent cast that also includes Marie Josee Craze, Emanuelle Seigner, Anne Consigny and a heart-stoppingly moving Max von Sydow as Bauby’s dad.