LETS GET READY
TO RRRRUMBLE!!!
Forget everything
you know about wheel chairs, the warm and fuzzy feeling of Special
Olympics, and every movie-of-the-week/tv interview you have seen on the
subject of quadriplegics. Murderball is about kick ass male
athletes who love the take no prisoners world of wheelchair rugby. Some
of these men have limbs that have been destroyed by disease or the
medical procedures that kept them alive; many have spinal cord injuries
that are the result of nutty, even funny, accidents. Whatever. There is
more testosterone in Murderball than in NFL Films and WWF
contests, combined.
Centered on the war
between the US team and its Canadian counterpart (coached by a US team
apostate) for world wheelchair rugby dominance, Murderball puts
us in a world of pride, anger, and defiance that has never been captured
on film. The thrill of it is indescribable. The wheel chairs are cool.
The groupies are devoted. The competitors are sexy, ferocious, and
complicated. There’s even a video sex manual. The two and a half year
trek to the 2004 Paralympics in Athens documented here is full of
dramatic shifts, and a lot of laughs. It’s a journey you’re not likely
to forget.
--Jed Dietz
Presented by: Henry
Alex Rubin
Biography:
Henry Alex Rubin produced Freestyle, which was wildly popular at
MFF 2002, and won awards at the Urbanworld and Woodstock Film Festivals.
He directed Who is Henry Jaglom?, and was second unit director on
fiction films, Cop Land
and Girl, Interrupted. He is the son of art historian James
Rubin, and is working on a new project with Winona Ryder. Murderball
won a Special Jury and Audience Award at Sundance 2005.
