About
Special Needs
We all dedicate this independent film to the special need adults, who have enriched our lives. This also includes their families and the caregivers who serve them.
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My Apocalyptic Thanksgiving is meant to delve into the daily lives of adults with special needs living in South Central Los Angeles. Our hope is to show a more realistic view of balancing their rights versus their safety and the safety of others. Humanizing them is also another goal for we are all lovable in God’s eyes regardless if we are different or similar. We all share that we are humans first.
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Mental disabilities include mental retardation, Autism, Asperger’s, Epilepsy and learning disabilities. As these are all on a spectrum, they impact everyone differently rather than a “one size” fits all.
Autistic Inspiration
Writer/Producer Richard Soriano has been taking care of special needs adults for a several years. He was listening to a radio advertisement about finding a soul mate online. An autistic adult also listening asked if he could find his mother online. Richard's heart sank.
But it also sparked him to write about the many heartbreaking, inspirational and funny stories from taking care of these wonderful people. Producer Holly Soriano also drew from her own experiences taking care of adults with developmental disabilities and mental illness to help with the details. Director/Producer Charles Unger helped to make the story more accessible to audiences not as familiar with those worlds. It all came together as the indie film My Apocalyptic Thanksgiving.
Zombies
Richard is obsessed with the undead and zombies rather than just being a pure horror fan. There is something about being trapped in a soulless body that intrigues both him and Holly. Charlie loves the popular culture idea of using zombies to represent things in movies. Some of the autistic adults love zombie movies. Others like horror movies. One in particular loves violent movies and owns the entire collection of the Saw movies.
Thanksgiving Day
My Apocalyptic Thanksgiving movie was originally set around Thanksgiving Day to pay tribute to Oprah's reunion with her long lost sister on it. But Charlie helped Richard to see if would be more powerful if Richard were to draw from when Richard's father passed away. This left Richard to decide what to do about the family business of taking care of adults with special needs since he already had a career in computer engineering.
Forgiveness
Forgiveness is really about the Christian value of acceptance for we cannot change the past or other people. But we have free will to decide how we will respond to them. That's why Richard blogs about it in http://strengththroughforgiveness.com
