Oliver Sacks: His Own Life: A Virtual Speed Cinema Presentation

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Oliver Sacks, Greenwich Village, 1961

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Oliver Sacks: His Own Life
Directed by Ric Burns

Streaming starts Wednesday, September 23

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“One of the surprising and moving lessons of this revealing film is how often the most gifted people are underappreciated.”—Stephen Farber, The Hollywood Reporter

A month after receiving a fatal diagnosis in January 2015, Oliver Sacks sat down for a series of filmed interviews in his apartment in New York City. For eighty hours, surrounded by family, friends, and notebooks from six decades of thinking and writing about the brain, he talked about his life and work, his abiding sense of wonder at the natural world, and the place of human beings within it.

Drawing on these deeply personal reflections, as well as nearly two dozen interviews with close friends, family members, colleagues and patients, and archival material from every point in his life, this film is the story of a beloved doctor and writer who redefined our understanding of the brain and mind. A selection of the Telluride Film Festival and the New York Film Festival. 2019, U.S., DCP, 114 minutes.  Recommended for 16+.