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TESTED
Dying Is Not Giving Up
Life without Limits
MusicianFest - Never Too Old
7 Yards: The Chris Norton Story
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Documentary and Reality

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Life Film Fest 2021

A DOCUMENTARY THAT WILL INSPIRE YOU TO OVERCOME.

7 YARDS is a feature-length documentary that explores the resilience and perspective of Chris Norton. In October 2010 at age 18, Chris suffered a debilitating spinal cord injury during a college football game. Doctors gave him just a 3 percent chance to ever move again. But he defied that diagnosis.

After years of physical therapy and training, Chris’ story went viral in 2015 when he successfully walked across the college graduation stage with the help of his fiancée Emily. Video of Chris walking to get his diploma touched the world and has received over 300 million views. Soon after, Chris and Emily set an ambitious new goal: walk seven yards side-by-side down their wedding aisle. The film features powerful interviews, emotional reenactments and real footage from their 2018 wedding. It’s the inspirational comeback story of Chris and his journey from college athlete to medical miracle to viral inspiration and now adoptive father.

7 Yards: The Chris Norton Story

Michigan student, Hailey Callahan, visits Holocaust survivor Fred Lessing at his home after meeting him at the Holocaust Memorial Center. Fred shares his story of how his boyhood teddy bear was his only family while hiding in Holland and reads an excerpt from a children's book that was written about him and his bear. This story will be featured in an hour long film, Shoah Ambassadors.

Bear and Fred

"Dying Is Not Giving Up" features conversations between Licensed Psychotherapist Kelly Grosklags and her patient, Judy Erdahl, who was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer. Together along with Erdahl's family, friends and oncologist, new perspectives are shared in hopes of making the dying experience more meaningful to a person.

Dying Is Not Giving Up

G-Ride is a 22-minute short-form documentary film about the struggles of homelessness, recovery, and the death of someone close for Mike “G-Ride” Griffith, a pedicab driver in the college town of Chico, California. From sleeping under picnic tables, skinny-dipping in the community pool and his addiction to methamphetamines, Mike “G-Ride” has worked hard to become who he is today: Chico “Best Local Personality” and “Best Cab Company” for the last four consecutive years.

Longer:
Mike was raised in foster homes until he aged out of the foster system. He went to live with his grandparents, however they both died when he was 19 years old. So he found himself without a home and living on the streets in Chico. He found community with the city’s homeless and shortly thereafter, someone introduced him to methamphetamines. Addicted, homeless, jobless, and no one to help him, Mike hit his rock bottom. One night, he was skinny-dipping in the community pool and he saw someone drive up on a pedicab. Mike asked if he could learn how to drive one and the next day began driving around downtown Chico. He found he could make some money and perhaps work his way off the streets. He began dressing up as different characters so little kids could meet their heroes: a Troll, or Mr. Incredible. Now twelve years sober, Mr. Incredible (Mike) sings “Happy Birthday” to a boy at the pool where he used to go skinny-dipping.

The film’s narrative tells the intersection of Mike’s life with Kristina Chesterman—a Chico State nursing student who was riding her bike home from school and was hit by a drunk driver. She died four days later. Mike reached out to the family to start a bike safety and drunk driving awareness event. A few months after Mike and Kristina’s parents began planning the event, Kristina’s mom, Sandra, found a picture of Kristina on the back of Mike’s pedicab, holding Mike’s dog, Lil’ G. The picture was from the night before Kristina was hit. Mike was Kristina’s last safe ride home. Kristina was a donor, and her pancreas and one of her kidneys went to one of Mike’s friends from high school.


G-Ride concludes with Mike talking about the daily struggle to stay clean, the impact he has on the community, and their love for him as his motivation to keep riding. From a homeless-meth-addict to Mr. Incredible, Mike “G-Ride” is a Chico Icon who makes people smile and see there is goodness and love in the world.

G-Ride: The Mike Griffith Story

I’ll See You Later tells the life altering stories of adoption, profoundly carried between families learning to embody love together. Open adoption stories, where the birth mom is a welcome part of the child’s life even as they are raised by their adoptive parents, are brave, courageous, and beautiful. This documentary film tells the real stories of adoption as shared by families who have lived it. For those who have an adoption story, this film resonates with a heart-aching richness and reflects the beauty of self-giving love; stories that reveal the very best in each of us. Some stories of adoption do not say “goodbye,” but, “I’ll see you later.”

I'll See You Later

This films follows Andrew Paddison ,a Thalidomider,challenge himself by handcycling around the north coast of Scotland and raise awareness and money for SafeLives Charity, a domestic abuse charity. His journey carries that message that limitations shouldn't stop you from doing anything in life.

Life without Limits

A half-hour documentary MusicianFest: Never Too Old highlights the power of music to bring joy, purpose, connectivity, and healing to all people. The film shines a light on MusicianFest, an initiative to provide free, age-friendly musical performances at senior centers and assisted living facilities in the United States and Canada.

MusicianFest - Never Too Old

Having experienced an abortion in her past, Penny knew without a doubt that choosing adoption was the choice she would make for her second pregnancy.

Penny: Portrait of a Birth Mom

He has trained some of the most well-known NFL Athletes in recent history (Joe Flacco, Patrick Peterson, Darnell Savage), but few know his powerful life story. Overcoming unbelievable tragedy, heartbreak, and testing, this is the journey of an underdog from Jersey, his family, and a world-class sports facility, TEST Football Academy.

TESTED

Dr. John DenBoer has made it his life's work to find a cure for dementia. He was personally impacted by this disease when his grandmother, a woman who helped raised him, was diagnosed with dementia and eventually passed. Not many people know what dementia even is. This documentary shares the startling statistics, the misconceptions about this disease, as well as preventative actions people can take.

This Is Dementia

As the COVID-19 pandemic ravaged long-term care and skilled nursing facilities, blame was thrown quickly at the facilities and their operators. But where does the responsibility actually lie for the failure to protect tens of thousands of frail seniors? This 20-minute documentary explores the causes behind the COVID-19 crisis in long-term care facilities across the United States.

What COVID-19 Exposed in Long-Term Care
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