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From: Blanka Koffer, Berlin/Praha
Date: 21 Oct 2007
Time: 16:27:34 -0500
Remote Name: 212.67.80.130
This is the English version of our press release. Anyone interested in the original German and/or the French version, please contact me at bkoffer@gmx.de. -- It´s always the butler who did it and it´s always the stutterer who´s the idiot Film awards "Golden Glottis" and "Knotted Tongue" 2007 On International Stuttering Awareness Day 2007, the web community of the German Association of People who stutter (Forum der BVSS e.V.) has inaugurated two awards for films involving representations of stuttering. These film awards aim at raising public awareness of people who stutter. The most important task in dealing with this speech disorder is to confront negative stereotypes of stutterers - not only on behalf of the person who listens but also in the mind of the person who stutters. In general, the media keep reenforcing negative images of people who stutter but these days one can also find more positive and realistic portrayals. The "Knotted Tongue 2007", the award for the worst representation of stuttering in a movie, goes jointly to two movies: "Alles auf Zucker" (Germany 2004) and "Feuer, Eis und Dosenbier" (Germany 2002). In Dani Levys movie "Alles auf Zucker" Steffen Groth plays the role of Thomas Zucker, a young good-looking but somehow inhibited man who gets to know a young good-looking and brave woman who seduces and, in doing so, rescues him from the supposed usual fate of the lonely stutterer being excluded from any hope of a joyful love life. Matthias Dinter, director of "Feuer, Eis und Dosenbier", provides the audience with his vision of a stutterer (Jonas Gruber) being reliably stupid from the beginning to the end of the story. The "Golden Glottis 2007" for the most realistic portrayal of a person who stutters goes to "Ensemble, c´est tout" (France 2007), directed by Claude Berri, based on the novel written by Anne Gavalda. The situation of the stuttering Philibert (Laurent Stocker) is told in a differentiated manner and comes close to the reality of many stutterers these days: well-educated, working on their speech disorder, dealing with everyday problems like everyone else. Philibert is a person who manages to live his life according to his dreams despite and with his speech disorder. Stuttering in this film is being represented as it is seen by real stutterers: a distinguishing feature – only one among many others of their unique personality. www.forum.bvss.de