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“This Shoot Collapsed That Separation Completely” | Reid Davenport, Life After

Black-and-white image of a woman in white on a hospital bed with four men in suits around her.#image_title

Films are made over many days, but some days are more memorable, and important, than others. Imagine yourself in ten years looking back on this production. What day from your film’s development, production or post do you think you’ll view as the most significant and why?

For me, the most significant day in the course of making this film was the very last day of production. We had planned a simple pick-up shoot to grab some b-roll of me doing research in my apartment in my role as filmmaker-investigator.

Almost at the last minute, I decided I wanted to film a scene of me filling out an application for Medical Aid in Dying. After all, Life After is, in part, about the ways that disabled people are dying prematurely, often under pressure, from Canada’s liberal assisted suicide laws. Having poured years of research, interviews, and analysis into the film, I thought: why not get a little personal?

This “request to die” form is available for all disabled adults in Canada. With producer Colleen Cassingham on-camera beside me, I began this bizarre exercise with humor. As cliché as it sounds, I often use humor to distance myself from daunting experiences. It’s a defense mechanism to shield myself from embarrassment and keep others comfortable.

It started out light, as planned: “Oooo, look at me filling out this form even though I’m making a film about how dangerous this is…ha ha ha.” But after Colleen and I joked our way through filling out some basic information, the questions that were intended to determine whether I was eligible for assisted suicide took on a strange air of familiarity.

How often does your disability limit daily activity? Well, I guess all the time.

Do you believe that your medical condition is serious and cannot be relieved by any means I accept? Well, yes, there is no cure for cerebral palsy. Yes, it seriously impacts my life, so it is serious.

I knew even before filling out the form that I would be eligible for assisted death according to Canadian law. But I wasn’t prepared for how cursory the form would be, or how it would make my life feel one-dimensional so quickly. I have been asked versions of these questions many times before, mostly in medical settings—where my life becomes synonymous with everything I can’t do, devoid of any other part of who I am.

As I sat there with my crew, I felt utterly alone, transported to a dimension containing my past experiences of isolation and failure, combined with aspects of a parallel path (one without my wonderful family and wife, an education and the means to support myself financially). For the first time, I earnestly wondered: In this parallel dimension, would I choose to hit “send” on this form and decide to end my life?

If I were Canadian, my government would help me end my life just because I have cerebral palsy. It’s a theoretical weight that I literally felt. On the heels of recently completing a deeply personal film (I Didn’t See You There, Sundance Film Festival 2022), I was eager to make a film with separation between myself and the subject matter. After years of making Life After in this way—filming other people, building a thesis—this shoot collapsed that separation completely.

See all responses to our annual Sundance Question here.

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