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My Mom’s First Olympics

Directed by: Ran Carmeli
53 Minutes, 1997

The critically acclaimed film focuses on the director’s mother, and sensitively portrays her struggle and determination that led her to compete in the Para Olympics in Atlanta despite of her blindness. The film also deals with the mother gradual blindness and on how it affected the family’s everyday life. Ran Carmeli, a filmmaker and a son, recalls the process that lead him to create the film: “My mother started to lose her eyesight 15 years ago. It was a gradual process that continued for about ten years. In retrospect, I understood that she made tremendous efforts in order to prevent my brother and myself from noticing the enormous change taking place in our daily family life. And then, one morning, on the clothesline at home I was confronted with an irritating picture. Lines of colorful clothes and fabrics that I brought with me from my trip to India were hanging there and all I saw was just one single color, purple. Everything was purple. A complete memory was erased, that was how I felt, as if she, light mindedly, had taken away all the memories from me without even feeling it in her way to protect herself… and me. I was angry with my mom, I was very angry with her. Only afterwards I could realize her heroism. Already then, I think, I knew that that one day I would make a documentary film about my mom. Her ambitious drive to win a medal at the Para-Olympics in Atlanta was a good initiative for me to do so…”

Credits

Director: Ran Carmeli

Producer: Micha Shagrir

Writer: Ran Carmeli