Resilience, created by students at East Hills Boys High School, offers a clear, youth-made exploration of inclusion, perception and individual experience within a school setting. Without presuming a single story, the film highlights themes connected to physical disability, spina bifida and the everyday realities of teenagers who use a wheelchair. It invites audiences to rethink assumptions and pay attention to different viewpoints in school communities. As part of the Focus on Ability International Short Film Festival, Resilience celebrates young voices and the value of representing diverse abilities on screen. The result is a thoughtful, human portrait that encourages conversation and greater understanding.
It's one of the funny things that I struggle to get my head around is when people say wheelchairs, you know that if you're able-bodied, you see this thing that you presume is confining. When you're in a wheelchair, it's awesome, it's your freedom, it's your life, it's like there's nothing confining you back and it's the thing that opens up you, opens up yourself to the world. Hi, my name is Ahmed and I go to Eastwood Boys High School and I'm a year 9. I was born with a disability called spina bifida, which is an incomplete development of the spinal cord, which is also associated with hydrocephalus, which is extra fluid that builds up on the brain. This required me to get a tube into my stomach to be able to drain out the fluid. I want to point out that it's really not different to any other students. We all are here for the same purpose and we get our education in the same way any other person would. Hi, I'm Miss Truffage. I'm Ahmed's year advisor and I've been his year advisor since year 7. Hello, my name is Karen Savins and I'm the Deputy Principal at Eastwood Boys High School. I had the pleasure three years ago to oversee the enrolment of the year 7 boys and in those enrolments was a young man by the name of Ahmed. Ahmed was the first boy that came to our school that had a disability for, what would I say, chair, in a chair. Ahmed has blossomed here at Eastwood Boys. I'm sure he would have blossomed anywhere that he went to because of his personality. But at Eastwood Boys, he has shown us what it is to live with a disability and to integrate into a mainstream high school. He performs at school really well. He is an independent, capable student who is able to get involved with everything and he's really engaged and enjoys participating in all school activities really. Well, the challenges Ahmed faced, we faced with him as well. So, the first thing we had to be aware of was where we were rooming Ahmed and we take that in consideration every year when we start the timetable, which is not a problem. We just need to prioritise that to make sure the rooms are accessible for him. We had to work with a body of people called AMU to establish ramps and accessibility to a majority of our blocks so that Ahmed could integrate thoroughly into the high school. For sport, we have arranged for Ahmed to introduce us to wheelchair basketball, which was a great experience and his class got to play with an instructor that came out from the wheelchair association to show us exactly what that sport enabled and it also allowed Ahmed to play freely with his own friends at his level. So, as his year advisor, my job is more about welfare and how Ahmed settles in around the school, how he feels dealing with his peers, relationships with teachers and friends and all that kind of thing. Predominantly, I help Ahmed when those kind of issues arise. So, for him, he has actually really developed greatly. At first, he was a bit unsure about making friends, but now he's kind of killing it. Ahmed inspires me to be a better person with strength and all that because I can't imagine being in Ahmed's shoes, all the stuff he has to go through. So, he inspires me to be a better person in general. Resilience for me, it's the ability to be able to call on yourself when struggles are near. And it's something that you build and it's something that you manipulate. I know that I'm stronger because my whole life, I kind of demanded it. I built a stronger expectation of who I was or who I am. When you're reflecting now, you realize that you know the wins and the losses work into one. You know the wins and the losses work into one. you
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Resilience by East Hills Boys High School (2022)
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Resilience
by East Hills Boys High School - SCHOOL DOCUMENTARIES
