(MENAFN- Arab Times) Filmmaker Heath Cozens hopes to smash stereotypes about the disabled with his new documentary "Doglegs," about a handicapped pro-wrestling league in Japan. The New Zealand-born director discovered the wrestlers, who sometimes fight able-bodied opponents despite their physical and mental disabilities, while living in Japan for 18 years. The film premiered at the Canadian International Documentary Film Festival in April.
Cozens said he wanted his first feature-length documentary to take the audience on the same emotional rollercoaster he felt when he saw a Doglegs match for the first time. "I wanted to laugh, then I felt bad about myself wanting to laugh and ashamed," Cozens explained in an interview. "I just didn't know how I should feel about it." "Doglegs" follows five members of the Tokyo league as they confront their disabilities and demons in the wrestling ring and in their personal lives. The film shows fans cheering as fighters bash one another mercilessly and a female announcer spices up her commentary with personal details about the combatants.
Cozens said exploitation was a valid concern and initially he thought about doing an expose. But as he watched a match he saw what a positive environment it was and that they were changing peoples' attitudes about the disabled. "I realized that what they are doing was performing brain surgery, heart surgery on the audience, changing the audience from inside out," Cozens said. "I felt the transformation."
Doglegs started in 1991 as a volunteer group for the disabled and morphed into its present form after two disabled men had a fight over a woman. The skirmish gave the group's able-bodied volunteer leader Yukinori Kitajima the idea of forming a wrestling league that would challenge how the disabled are perceived. "Doglegs" follows "Sambo" Shintaro, a sanitation worker with cerebral palsy and a star fighter for 20 years, as he approaches his retirement match against Kitajima.
Depression
Another fighter, Yuki Nakajima, who suffers from depression, seems to feed off the power he gets from climbing into the ring and facing down his demons. "We have to keep fighting with our own weakness to move forward and get strong, even if we keep losing," Nakajima explained in an email. Cozens, who now lives in New York, spent five years making the film that looks at disabilities in a new way. "Handicap is in the eye of the beholder," he said.
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LOS ANGELES: Protagonist Pictures has taken on worldwide sales rights outside Nordic territories to "Klown Forever," the sequel to the 2010 hit Danish comedy "Klown." In addition, Protagonist has taken over worldwide distribution of the first film and will be talking up both at Cannes next week.
Based on the long-running TV series (2005-08), the Klown films center on the antics of two thirtysomething best friends and comedy partners, Frank, played by Frank Hvam, and Casper, played by Casper Christensen. Hvam and Christensen also wrote both features, while one of Denmark's biggest filmmakers, Mikkel Norgard ("The Keeper of Lost Causes"), is the director and Jesper Zartov produces.
In "Klown Forever," Frank and Casper's friendship is tested when Casper decides to move to Los Angeles and pursue a solo career there. Determined to win back his friend, Frank follows him to California for a holiday of spectacular misadventures. Among those making cameo appearances in the film are Isla Fisher, Maroon 5 frontman Adam Levine and Danish heartthrob Nikolaj Coster-Waldau ("Game of Thrones").
"Klown," which was acquired for US remake by Warner Bros., has a host of self-declared celebrity fans including Sacha Baron Cohen, who hired Hvam and Christensen to write his next film, "The Lesbian," at Paramount. "Klown" was distributed by Nordisk in Scandinavia and grossed over $10 million in Denmark alone; it was sold by TrustNordisk to Drafthouse in the US and Arrow in the UK among other territories. Nordisk is releasing "Klown Forever" in September in Denmark; Hvam and Christensen will be in Cannes to launch the film to Danish and international media. Hvam and Christensen's production company Nutmeg Pictures produced the film.
"We are so proud to be a part of the 'Klown' universe with Frank, Casper, Mikkel and Jesper," said Mike Goodridge, CEO of Protagonist. "The first 'Klown' is unquestionably the funniest film I have ever seen, and, like all the best comedies, combines side-splitting humor with a great big heart. The second film takes the friendship between our two heroes into newly complicated, dangerous, risque, tender and funny directions, and we feel it will win over a whole new legion of fans around the world."
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