One Vision plans celebration of community

Oct. 16 Expo features free screening of award-winning film

A private screening of “In A Different Key,” the true story of the first person diagnosed with autism, will be shown at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake Sunday, Oct. 16.

One Vision has arranged the screening with filmmakers Caren Tucker and John Donvan as a special community event aimed at promoting inclusion.  The filmmakers will participate in a meet and greet, as well as a question and answer session after the viewing. A One Vision Services Expo is also part of the event from 3-7 p.m. at the Surf.

The event is free of charge.

“Our services look different today than it did 25 years ago when everyone lived at ‘The Village,’” said One Vision CEO Mark Dodd. “Today, the people we support are in their own homes in our community. They’re our neighbors, our church friends, just everyday people who enjoy their right to a more private life. But there is still a strong need for community inclusion that depends on all of us to do our part to ensure social justice continues to move forward for people with Intellectual/Developmental Disability.”

“In A Different Key” was inspired by the Pulitzer Prize finalist book of the same name and features original music by Wynton Marsalis.  It tells the story of Donald Triplett, of Forest, Miss., who nearly 75 years ago became the first child diagnosed with autism.  Beginning with his family’s odyssey, it tells the story of this often misunderstood condition, and of the civil rights battles waged by the families of those who have it.  It spans time an era when families were shamed and children were condemned to institutions, to one in which a cadre of people with autism push not simply for inclusion, but for a new understanding of autism: as difference rather than disability.

The film also includes the stories of others, like Ruth Sullivan, who rebelled against a medical establishment that blamed cold and rejecting “refrigerator mothers” for causing autism; and of fathers who pushed scientists to dig harder for treatments.  There are also doctors like Leo Kanner, who pioneered the understanding of autism; lawyers like Tom Gilhool, who took the families’ battle for education to the courtroom; scientists who sparred over how to treat autism; and those with autism, like Temple Grandin, Alex Plank, and Ari Ne’eman, who explained their inner worlds and championed the philosophy of neurodiversity.  The question of whether there is truly an autism “epidemic,” and whether vaccines played a part in it is also examined.

One Vision is a human services nonprofit organization that supports people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). Incorporated in 1966, it first opened in 1971 and now serves more than 400 individuals across 30 communities in North Iowa.