by Erin Free
Worth: $18.50
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Emily Petricola, Korey Boddington, Kane Perris
Intro:
Visually arresting, fast-paced and deeply affecting...
One of the many (many, many) great things about the documentary form is its often-extraordinary ability to draw the audience into worlds and ideas that they may previously have been wholly unfamiliar with. Sure, fictional cinema can do this too, but the raw immediacy of documentary filmmaking – the sheer truth of it – makes it a much more powerful cinematic medium in this regard. There’s no better recent example of this than the potent, strikingly honest and poetically forged doco Changing Track, which hums with a sense of authenticity rarely achieved. The world of those living with disability is often discussed and depicted on screen in fleeting terms, but Changing Track digs in, and digs deep, providing a fascinating window into a difficult, often bruising world.
Changing Track introduces us to three extraordinary young people faced with the kind of challenges that would destroy most. Once fit, successful and happy, Emily Petricola’s life shifted irrevocably when she began to experience numbness in her body and was eventually given a diagnosis of MS; sports and action enthusiast Korey Boddington lives with disability after two shocking childhood accidents; and Kane Perris, born with Albinism and resultant partial blindness, has suffered through his whole young life dealing with the bitter after-effects and psychological trauma of schoolyard bullying. This disparate trio, however, discovers a powerful new ability in cycling, and a cycling community that lavishes them with support and encouragement. Burning with ambition and their own motivations, Emily Petricola, Korey Boddington, Kane Perris now have the Paralympics in their collective sights…
Built largely around frank, hard-hitting, occasionally funny and often heartbreakingly sad interviews with the three main participants (and their various trainers, supporters and carers), Changing Track shows just how hard it can be living with disability, but also ironically doesn’t shy away from also showing what a positive effect these challenges have had. Emily Petricola, Korey Boddington and Kane Perris are fantastic interview subjects, and the audience will be rooting for all of them right from the off.
Australian director Tristan Kenyon, along with his co-writer and cinematographer Timothy Kenyon, provides a beautiful frame for the interviews at the film’s core via a series of poetic images and sequences that effectively capture the transformative – and indeed, near transcendent – qualities of cycling.
Visually arresting, fast-paced and deeply affecting, Changing Track takes the audience on a truly fascinating journey.
Changing Track will screen in cinemas across Australia throughout November as premiere and Q&A events, culminating in special screenings on December 3 for International Day of People with Disability (IDPwD). For all ticketing and venue information, click here.
