Twisted

Premiered January 30, 2007

Directed by

Laurel Chiten

EXPLORE THE FILM

About the Documentary

After a car accident when she was 17, Twisted director Laurel Chiten woke up in an ambulance with a collapsed lung and a head wound requiring stitches. She was discharged days later, apparently healed. The following spring her head started jerking back and forth, up and down “like someone else was in control of my body.” Eventually doctors diagnosed Chiten with dystonia, a neurological disorder that forces muscles into abnormal, often painful, movements or postures that can cause the body to twist, as though the brain has a mind of its own.

In Twisted, Chiten reveals the agonies and challenges of dystonia by interweaving the stories of three sufferers as they seek treatment, confront the disease and ponder weighty decisions.

Shari Tritt has generalized dystonia, a genetic form that affects her whole body. As a child, radical brain surgery improved the dystonia but left her unable to speak clearly. Then, the Internet gave her a voice, and in a chat room one day she met Ira—who loves to talk. It was a match made in heaven.

Photographer and filmmaker Remy Campbell used to walk bent over at a 45-degree angle and suffered constant pain. Five years ago she decided to undergo risky, experimental surgery called deep brain stimulation (DBS) in which electrodes implanted in the brain act as a “pacemaker” for the electronic activity. Since then she has regained control over her body. She now walks upright and is pain free.

Pat Brogan becomes the film¹s central story. Riding his bike in the pre-dawn darkness, training for a triathlon, Brogan was sideswiped by a hit-and-run driver and left for dead. He woke up in a trauma center. Months later, he began to notice that something was terribly wrong: his head was wrenched severely to the right, and without great effort, he couldn’t make it go back.

Sidelined from his promising career as a basketball coach, Brogan tries treatments and medications without success. With no other options, he decides to gamble on Deep Brain Stimulation, in spite of the risks. Twisted follows Brogan into the operating room and beyond as he improves for a time, only to have the dystonia return more severely than ever. The heartbreaking roller coaster ride stumps his doctors and threatens to rob Brogan of everything that is dear to himhis new job, his marriage and his sense of self.

Through these stories of courage and hope Twisted examines universal themes of control, loss and isolation, taking us on a journey of discovery into the heart of the human condition.

The Filmmaker

Laurel Chiten

Laurel Chiten has been an independent filmmaker for over 20 years. Her credits include: Touched, which won Best Documentary at the Female Eye Film Festival in Toronto; The Jew in the Lotus, an ITVS-funded film about a group of rabbis who met with the Dalai Lama; and Twitch and Shout, a documentary about people living with Tourette syndrome, which was nationally broadcast in 1995 as part of the highly-acclaimed PBS series, P.O.V. Twitch and Shout was nominated for an Emmy and has received numerous other awards.

Chiten was an artist-in-residence at the Bellagio Study and Conference Center, sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation. She has also received prestigious residency scholarships at Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony.

Full Credits

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