Céline Roustan
In filmmaker Janet Harbord’s Autism Plays Itself, three autistic respondents watch, analyze, and comment on the behavior of autistic children filmed in archival clinical recordings from the 50s. Offering a rare and honest insight, this film is unique in its format, storytelling approach, and how it deciphers different ways of expression, all with humor and emotional depth. An unusual meta-examination of how filmmaking and the scientific craft intermix, the film fascinatingly seeks to reframe autistic identity way from a clinical past that viewed it as alien and disordered.
Harbord explains that she was looking for the first mention of autism in medical films to understand how “film had influenced the diagnosis of autism in the postwar moment”. The archival film she uses is the oldest she discovered set in a clinical setting. She was struck by how the “camera is obsessed with the apparent atypical body language of autistic children and their fascination with textures, patterns and the properties of objects”.
There is a real disconnect between the protagonists on screen and the camera. Harbord bridges that gap by inviting autistic individuals to interpret the images, which through their observation, grants us an invaluable understanding of this often misperceived behavior. “I wanted to bring a contemporary autistic reading to this footage to reclaim it as a magnificent feat of imagination and survival on the part of these children, and to insert an autistic voice into medical film archives”, she confessed to us. This film is almost like a Rosetta Stone, bringing genuine insight into these relics.
Footage of a child at play in the 1957 medical film.
Well acquainted with the three respondents, Sophie Broadgate, Ash Loydon, and Ethan Lyon through a previous project already dealing with autism and cinema, Harbord had them comment on the images over three days, hoping for a “speculative reading of what the children might be thinking and doing”. Fortunately, all three brought so much more with their personalities. Providing a contrast to the clinical aspect of the images and the coldness of the way they were shot, her analysts radiate warmth, insight, and humor to create emotional engagement for the audience. While the film is on the lengthy side, all three potently ground it via their humanity, decoding for audiences the nuances we might otherwise fail to grasp.
The film challenges preconceived ideas of what autism is by allowing the three respondents to also reclaim their own narratives. From the images and the hours of testimonies, Harbord and editor Sasha Litvintseva meticulously crafted the film into a structure that plays with patterns and repetitions to enhance the narrative and the emotional core of the film.
Autism Plays Itself had its World Premiere at the 2024 edition of Hot Docs, where it won the Best International Short Documentary award. Harbord is currently working on a short about the study of twins in archive films.