Written by Vinay Ranganathan, Photos courtesy of SCAD Savannah Film Festival
At the 2020 SCAD Savannah Film Festival, “Shorts Spotlight: Overcoming Obstacles” presented four different stories about overcoming adversity. Each person in those stories, whether by physical or environmental stressors, had to face up to a unique challenge and overcome that barrier. These stories take multiple angles, some in the form of military adversity, others in the form of physical disability or in hostile environments. Each of these stories offers a unique perspective and each also relates to me.
I am not physically disabled, I have never been in the military and I will never know what it is like to be an indigenous woman like in the films “Endure the Suck,” “The Blind Captain,” “The 11th Order” and “Blackfeet Boxing: Not Invisible,” respectively. I have, however, had a learning disability in the past. I had epilepsy. Although it was so long ago, and I don’t have it now, I know what it is like to have real struggles impeding your progress and success.
I don’t like to let what I had in elementary school define me, but I also recognize the impact my learning disability had on me getting to where I am today. I used to get made fun of in school because I was different, and a few other things came with that as well. One of those was that it was harder for me to learn conceptual things like mathematical equations. I was slower at learning. As soon as I learned something I forgot it. This is because epilepsy is a neurological condition.
I also had poor social skills as a result and, because of this, I had few friends. Before I got better, everything felt very sad and hopeless. I always felt like I hit a block in learning. But, I learned to push through it and overcame it because I had passions and wanted to do better for myself. I was always curious and learning.
I wanted to live my childhood with a purpose, and not have this learning disability block me from doing what I loved. This is why I connected with the “Shorts Spotlight: Overcoming Obstacles.” It highlights how things that may have once seemed impossible can be possible.
In the film “The Blind Captain,” the main character is Ahmet, a blind man. He uses technology to control a boat in which he sails across a channel from Europe to Asia via Turkey. I resonated with him because he, like me, was so positive. But he was also doing what he loved and didn’t let his visual impairment get in the way of doing what he wanted. He found a way to make his hobby work with him instead of against him. I respected that.
These films teach that there’s always a way to overcome obstacles and that doing what you love is important. Never letting anything get in the way of that will allow so many aspects of life to open up. At the end of “Endure the Suck,” one of the disabled veterans says something poignant:
“Life can be beautiful if you let it be.”
