I don’t watch the Oscars, over the years I’ve lost patience with the evening long affair. I definitely care about the winners and losers, I usually catch the highlights on youtube the next day. Another “thank goodness for the internet” moment.
It’s because I don’t watch the ceremony that I missed the winner of the category documentary short, Music By Prudence. This is a movie about a young singer from Zimbabwe and her band.
Nothing unusual there, but what is unusual is that the entire bad is made up of young people with disabilities who met while attending a school for disabled kids. In Zimbabwe these kids have very little chances of living, much less living a “normal life” An an excerpt from the website explains:
When Prudence was born, her paternal grandmother wanted her dead. In Zimbabwe, disabled children are sometimes believed to be the result of witchcraft. In extreme cases, families kill them—to remove the “curse” from their family.
Prudence’s mother kept her and fed her. Cast out of her husband’s (Prudence’s father’s) home, she brought the baby to her own mother’s rural home. Four years later, she left.
Music by Prudence traces the path of this little girl, and her remarkable transcendence from a world of hatred and superstition into one of music, love, and possibility.
