Diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis Turns Filmmaker Jason DaSilva's World Upside Down, Propelling Him on a Fateful Journey to Make Another Documentary

NEW YORK, June 11, 2014 — (PRNewswire) — Jason DaSilva tells a brave and remarkable story in When I Walk. He was already an accomplished documentary filmmaker (Lest We Forget, Olivia's Puzzle) by the age of 25. If there is glamour in the world of documentary, DaSilva garnered his share of it with his intelligence, good looks and genial manner, and he was able to travel the world making films about people and issues that mattered to him.

In 2006, DaSilva took a camera with him on a family vacation in the Caribbean. Though he had been diagnosed only months earlier with multiple sclerosis, the disease, which attacks the central nervous system, had until then remained invisible. Then a family member holding the camera catches the moment when the young man's legs crumple under him, leaving him helpless. The episode passes and DaSilva recovers his strength, but his collapse heralds the onset of an untreatable, unpredictable, often disabling illness. Being the filmmaker that he is, DaSilva decided to make a movie about it.

Jason DaSilva's When I Walk, an Official Selection of the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, will have its national broadcast premiere on PBS ( check local listings) on Monday, June 23, 2014, kicking off the 27th season of POV (Point of View), American television's longest-running independent documentary series. POV is the winner of a 2013 MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions. The film will stream on POV's website, www.pbs.org/pov/wheniwalk/, from June 24-July 23, 2014.

Given the mysteries surrounding multiple sclerosis, or MS—including its causes and the course it will take in any individual—DaSilva couldn't have known what he was getting into. Using animation, he illustrates what he learned, that MS causes the body's immune system to attack nerve endings in the brain and spinal cord. The results can include loss of vision, muscle control and balance. The animation has a surprisingly comic edge, and in the early stages of the disease, he is amazingly buoyant and positive.

When the filmmaker's mother, Marianne D'Souza, enters the film, it's clear that her son's fighting spirit was inherited from her. He's beginning to struggle, but she upbraids him—in a tough, loving manner that reflects her roots in India. She challenges him to finish the film he's started, wants to know why he's "whining and sighing all the time" and tells him, "Things are tough. . . . Get real . . . you molly-coddled North American kid!" Throughout her tirade, DaSilva can't stop grinning. As he says, "When all else fails, there's Mom."

In the span of five years, the once-vigorous, well-built young man goes from walking on wobbly legs to using a cane then a walker then a wheelchair and then a scooter.

He fights back in every way he can. In the beginning, he spends hours at the gym. He undergoes an experimental procedure that benefits him little. He goes to his ancestral India to make a fiction film, but is unable to finish. While there, he tries traditional medicine and spirituality. He visits an old uncle to ask whether the uncle remembers anyone else in the family with such a disease. An aunt on the Catholic side of his family sends him off to Lourdes, France, where he finds no miracle cure.

When DaSilva finally has an emotional breakdown, he bemoans the rapid pace of the disease. Despite his determination to adapt and make the most of what he has, he discovers that his disabilities have intensified so quickly that he barely has time to compensate for one affliction before something worse arrives.

Yet midway through When I Walk, something miraculous occurs. DaSilva meets Alice Cook, a young woman whose mother has MS, in a support group. The story of their love, as indomitable as MS, takes them through great and small joys and despair, with unexpected turns of humor. They marry and Cook gets pregnant.

Together, DaSilva and Cook spearhead the creation of AXS Map (access map), a crowd-sourced online tool for sharing reviews on the wheelchair accessibility of buildings in New York City. AXS Map encourages people to rate the accessibility of businesses and places on a scale of one to five stars. For DaSilva, the dream behind AXS Map is to know all the places that are accessible to him nearby in order to regain the spontaneity and adventure he enjoyed when he was able-bodied.

DaSilva relies more and more on Cook not only for everyday needs, but also for help in editing the film. His bond with his wife becomes both the means and subject of completing When I Walk. Through the burden of making the film, an unblinking record of his decline, he manages a great love and a great film, and perhaps makes meaning of his fate.

"I wanted to capture this transformative experience—becoming disabled—because I hadn't seen it done before, and people need to see how a degenerative disease impacts the lives of those living with it," says DaSilva. "My diagnosis was not the end of the world. Instead, it has proven to be a new way for me to see and be in the world."

When I Walk is a co-production of AXS Lab Inc. and ITVS, with support from the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program.

About the Filmmakers:
Jason DaSilva, Director/Producer
Jason DaSilva has been a prolific filmmaker for the past 10 years, directing four short films (Olivia's Puzzle, A Song for Daniel, Twins of Mankala and First Steps) and two feature-length documentaries (Lest We Forget and When I Walk). Many of his films have won awards; Olivia's Puzzle premiered at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival and qualified for an Academy Award®. Three of his films have been broadcast nationally on PBS, HBO and CBC. He also produced Shocking and Awful, a film installation on the movement against the war in Iraq, exhibited at the 2006 Whitney Biennial.

In 2006 DaSilva took a short break from filmmaking to earn his master's degree in applied media arts from Emily Carr University. He produced and directed an Op-Doc (opinion documentary) for The New York Times entitled The Long Wait, published in January 2013. He and Alice Cook live and work in New York City.

Alice Cook, Director/Producer/Editor
Alice Cook is a documentary filmmaker and producer living in New York City. When I Walk is her first production. She also produced and directed the New York Times Op-Doc The Long Wait, published in January 2013. She produced the digital media project AXS Map, which was funded by charitable giving from Google and other organizations. Cook received her bachelor's and master's degrees in engineering and science from Stanford University.

For the complete press release, visit www.pbs.org/pov/wheniwalk/

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130320/DC80188LOGO

SOURCE POV

Contact:

POV POV Communications: Email Contact 212-989-7425; Cathy Fisher Email Contact Amanda Nguyen Email Contact POV online pressroom: www.pbs.org/pov/pressroom