Newsletter: Reflecting on Mandy (1952) at the Autism Through Cinema conference
Last weekend I presented a paper at the Autism Through Cinema conference on Alexander Mackendrick's Mandy (1952), inspiring me to reflect on the British films that reflect my autism.
When I was asked to speak at the first ever Autism Through Cinema (ATC) conference at Queen Mary University of London, my mind raced through a hundred films I might focus on. I was invited to join the ATC podcast in 2021, for which I chose Jeane-Pierre Jeunet’s Amèlie (2001) as the focus of the discussion. I confess to not having ever related being autistic to the way I watched films before, and the conversation had a profound impact on me. Is there an autistic way of seeing, and does it explain why I often make connections between things that others fail to notice? Now a regular co-host of the podcast, I have been asking these questions of myself through an eclectic range of cinematic subjects, from Chungking Express (1994) and Moonrise Kingdom (2012) to The Batman (2022), The Falls (1980), and, most recently, Jeanne Dielman (1975).
For the conference, I wanted to consider how I might combine the work I have been doing with ATC, and the relaxed screenings at the BFI, with my historical research continued through this blog. When I worked on my undergraduate dissertation at Cambridge on Ealing Studios, two films stood out beyond the classic comedies I had already been familiar with: Basil Dearden’s Pool of London (1951) and Alexander Mackendrick’s Mandy (1952). The former continues to strike me as a radical experiment in filmmaking, as well as completely distinctive from contemporary British films in its depiction of an interracial relationship. The latter has remained with me as a wholly optimistic film about disability which broke with the fascination with cures and pessimism for those with life-long conditions. Mandy is a film which shows that disability is not a cause to leave someone behind.