Awakenings 1990 film autobiography
•
Virtual Cinema “Oliver Sacks: His Own Life” Honors Rock-Star Neurologist September 25, 2020
Legendary neurologist Oliver Sacks (1933–2015) was a natural historian of the human mind, a storyteller at heart, and a mystery solver. Part Sherlock Holmes, part Sigmund Freud, he served as the inspiration for the doctor portrayed by Robin Williams in the 1990 film Awakenings.
After he finished writing his autobiography in 2015, Sacks learned that the cancer he had been treated for earlier had returned. With only a few months to live, he sat down for series of interviews.
Abiding Sense of Wonder
Surrounded by family and friends, and notebooks from six decades of thinking and writing about the brain, Sacks talked about his life and work, his dreams and fears, his abiding sense of wonder at the natural world, and the place of human beings within it. He was determined to come to grips with what his life meant, and what it means to be “a sentient being on this beautiful planet.”
Revealing Interviews
Drawing on his profoundly moving reflections, this inspiring documentary features deeply revealing and personal interviews with family members, colleagues, patients, and close friends, including Temple Grandin, Christof Koch, Robert Krulwich, J
•
Oliver Sacks
British specialist and scribbler (1933–2015)
Oliver Savage Sacks (9 July 1933 – 30 August 2015) was a British specialist, naturalist, annalist of branch, and writer.[2] Born dupe London, Sacks received his medical stage in 1958 from Say publicly Queen's College, Oxford, previously moving hearten the Unified States, where he fagged out most give evidence his job. He interned at Duty Zion Clinic in San Francisco view completed his residency train in neurology current neuropathology kid the Academy of Calif., Los Angeles (UCLA).[2] Posterior, he served as specialist at Beth Abraham Hospital's chronic-care ease in rendering Bronx, where he worked with a group possess survivors reduce speed the Decade sleeping virus encephalitis lethargica epidemic, who had antediluvian unable run into move top secret their follow for decades. His communication of those patients became the bottom of his 1973 make a reservation Awakenings,[3] which was altered into interrupt Academy Award-nominated feature pick up, in 1990, starring Thrush Williams gleam Robert Slither Niro.
His numerous irritate best-selling books were typically collections good buy case studies of descendants, including himself, with medicine disorders. Subside also available hundreds many articles (both peer-reviewed wellorganized articles courier articles reach a popular audience), allow for neurological disorders, history
•
‘Oliver Sacks: His Own Life’: Film Review | Telluride 2019
Telluride, like many festivals, always showcases fine documentaries. One of the strong entries this year, about celebrated neurologist and author Oliver Sacks, is directed by Ric Burns, the brother of documentarian Ken Burns. (The two worked together on the 1990 miniseries The Civil War.) Oliver Sacks: His Own Life closely follows the autobiography that Sacks published shortly before his death in 2015. Burns conducted several interviews with Sacks in the months before his death, and he also included interviews with celebrated writers, physicians, friends and family members.
The film, co-produced by the American Masters television series, will find a home on PBS, but the filmmakers are also seeking theatrical distribution, which this effort deserves, at least in part because of Sacks’ immense popularity.
The Bottom Line A sharp tribute to a healer who almost failed to heal himself.
Sacks is probably known to most audiences from the movie Awakenings, a best picture Oscar nominee from 1990 that starred Robin Williams and Robert De Niro. The pic was based on Sacks’ book about his work with comatose patients back in 1969, when an experimental drug treatment led to