He subsequently became an executive producer on the film, "which definitely didn't hurt, having his name on your poster" notes Robinson. In the middle of the night, I had a crushing headache that took over my entire body and mind. Nothing made any sense, everything was beautiful but it was frightening, it was backward, there was no kind of linear logic to it. I was just blown away. Ive got a really nice camera, and I make documentaries. According to her, making a film about her struggles was the first linear thought she had after the stroke. He invited us to this strange, magical event in London a few days later, where they were going to beam him in. It was very painful for my ears. The documentary does a great job showing thatstroke-related disability is often not only a loss of one function or another, it is a perturbation of ones entire existence, of ones self-image. This was a very dramatic change and it happened very suddenly, but you have to accept that change is part of life. Niamh Malone was a clinical nurse specialist in stroke rehabilitation for more than a decade. [8], Netflix started streaming the film as a Netflix Original worldwide on March 18, 2016.[9]. A fluorescent green laptop screen would flash single words at me and simultaneously play them into my ears; I would repeat them back. But at this stage the doctors couldnt tell me why Ihad lost the ability to speak, read, write or think coherently. Iasked a friend if he thought I was a changed woman. It was decided I would go and live with my mother. There was a man wheeling me around and I spoke to him - but it didn't seem like he could hear what I was saying. Filling in a thick form, the doctor asked me questions, occasionally glancing up to gauge my responses. It later turned out that my stroke had been caused by a rare developmental malformation of blood vessels in my brain: something like this could have happened at any time. With Lotje Sodderland. We seeLotje struggle with the first sessions of cognitive evaluation and speech therapy, the embarrassment from not being able to remember simple word, her nervous laughter, her apologies for not making a lot of sense, her courageoussmile turning into uncontrollable tears of frustration and sadness. My Beautiful Broken Brain aired on Netflix on March 18, 2016. Lotje describes herself as hard-working, a traveler, someone who has lots of friends, someone who loves to read. I had to figure out for myself that I was never going to be the same as before and find out how can I work with the new me and see the beauty and positivity in my new limitations., Keeping love fun even when illness strikes, Lotje Sodderland on finding her limit-less possibilities after acquiring aphasia. It seemed entirely impossible that I would be able to love someone else and even more improbable that someone would love the damaged new me. Sodderland is lucky to be alive, having suffered a massive stroke which left her unable to speak, read, write and perform even simple tasks. She had finished that bottle some time ago and kept it as a reminder to get a new one on our next trip to Malaysia.. It was like waking up on a new planet that was strange and frightening; beautiful and overwhelming. But when I looked back, the words had slid off the page. Lotje, what did David Lynch mean to you before your stroke?LS: I got into Twin Peaks when I was a teenagerreally, really into Twin Peaks. In mid-January, I was admitted to the rehabilitation unit at Homerton hospital for a three-month period. By making videos and telling the story of his stroke, David found that he was able to visualise the physiological progress he had made and still needed to make. Sometimes, it is not about choosing to be positive but to understand and acknowledge that you have been hit with a mental condition or illness and working your way out of it is going to be very tough. But everyday life no longer made sense to my new brain. Its such a testament to the power of these phones.LS: Definitely. But light has atendency to emanate from the darkestplaces. I spent a long time constructing a message, and recording what I felt. He really helped us massively. To our great surprise he wrote an email a few days later back. NEURO SYMPOSIM BEIJING. CRTEX - BRAIN, CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE REALITY OF THE EGO. Read on for more from my conversation with the filmmakers, about their collaboration, how they got David Lynch on board, and what Sodderlands life looks like these days. I regained my speaking skills and used the film making process as a central tool to figure out who I was through images and sounds. The challenge is to rebuild your identity, Sodderland told me when I spoke with her and Robinson by phone from Austin, Texas, earlier this week. Before the stroke, I think my friends found my cynical sense ofhumour entertaining. Like many of the UK's 1.2 million stroke survivors, Sodderland spent months trying to relearn how to navigate this new world, where thoughts followed no structure and words lost their meaning. I remembered being put on a stretcher as paramedics asked the standard questions: what was my name? First I would need to get some money. He had called the ambulance asmy eyeballs disappeared into the back ofmyhead. I have no idea how I walked down four flights of stairs, orhow I found myself across the street in a hotel, trying to ask the receptionists for help. Two weeks after the stroke, I nearly burned the ward to a cinder when the hospital ran a standard independent living test on me (the making of tea and toast). But also I used it just on a practical level, to remember things, like meetings with doctors, and to communicate with friends, because I couldnt read or write. My family and friends knew that I was going to be different after the stroke and they accepted me. To make sense of what had happened, the former film producer documented her feelings and experiences with her therapies, physiological changes and a newly acquired communication disorder called aphasia through video clips that were turned into a full-length feature film called My Beautiful Broken Brain. My life is now split into two: before the stroke, and after. At some point I was able to communicate with my brother that I really needed to get in touch with this woman. But I think its fantastic. It is very difficult to be other peoples property. Jan later filled in the gaps. Really? 2023 Cond Nast. Can you put your hands on your shoulders? I didnt know what shoulders were. 'One of the first things I remember is waking up on a hospital trolley, in an elevator. Dutch-French filmmaker Lotje Sodderland didn't know young people could suffer from a stroke - until she had one herself in 2011, then aged 34. As I got more confident, I filled pages with words written in thick capital letters words that made sense to me, but that no one else could interpret. All rights reserved. Filmmaker Lotje Sodderland documents her recovery process from the hemorrhagic stroke she had at 34 and the new life she builds in the aftermath. Id forgotten her name, and I couldnt really explain what I wanted. Her doctor explains that the paths between her visual areas and her language areas are broken. He said, Do you remember me? He told me thatIhadbeen doing my word training at homewhenIstarted hallucinating and lost myvision. Expect major face-palming from Trekkies in July. And now Im starting from the beginning. One morning, I put the Biro to an empty sheet of paper, and with asudden momentum, my hand began to write the words that Lucy, who is Australian, had dictated: Throw the bloody boomerang back, mate. A phrase! At one stage before the film was called My Beautiful Broken Brain, it was called Life Interrupted. A house cleaner desperately searches for her husband as a dreaded criminal syndicate dredges up past tragedies and ultimately drives her to violence. My brain no longer had the ability to switch off. Objects would appear, shift and disappear Icouldnt help but wonder if the world was playing an almighty trick on me. He laughed and said, Well, Im happy youre still here.. After that I just became really interested in his films. Pretending she was an actor, playing a character in a film, also helped give her distance from the more distressing things she went through in hospital. Her friends describe her as someone impassioned, who was busy multitasking, writing films, writing in general, always readingthick books, someone very articulate. Now, he says, I dont interact with people in the same way, that I have become introspective. I woke to hear a voice debating the benefits andpitfalls of dipping a ginger nut biscuit in tea,and knew I must be in hospital again. Doctors telling me things that I dont understand. At age 34, film director Lotje Sodderland was struck by an intracerebral haemorrhagic stroke after a night out with her friends. I enjoy our talks so much more these days. So it was worth it? Three years ago she suffered a stroke herself. Looking back it was actuallyvery liberating -to have no ego, no past or future, no understanding of a lost, logical life. Since its inception, Aphasia SG has expanded its free community activities to include aphasia choir, virtual programmes and public outreach events such as movie screenings. I'm not able to work to the same level, and multi-task,as I did before. The hospitals language therapist had promised to get me discharged as soon as possible, assuming I was eager to go home. There was a chance, Iwas told, that I would be cleverer, faster, altogether better, than I had been pre-stroke. When he dropped me off at the station I said: Ithink were going to fall in love, and he said: Ithink so, too.. My Beautiful Broken Brain combines her many iPhone recordingscapturing her experience became an obsession in the face of faulty short-term memoryinterviews shot by the documentarian Sophie Robinson beginning just weeks after the hemorrhage, and special effects footage that re-creates the terrifying fever-dream experience of being inside Sodderlands malfunctioning brain, a world she compares to the Red Room in David Lynchs Twin Peaks. We see Lotje applying herself to the task with determination, over many hours, many days, and it seems that she is reading the words more effortlessly. Published: May 29, 2020 Newlyweds take on challenges of aphasia hand in hand, heart to heart When a sudden illness robbed Mrs Tan of her communication abilities, find out how she and her husband sourced for creative ways to recover while continue to enjoy the sweet moments of married life together. He genuinely seemed really interested in my experience. When he agreed to put his name to it, he insisted that Lotje and I share the executive producer credit with him. On one hand, it's landed a cast of incredibly funny actresses, but on the other, another reboot? When did that happen?SR: Netflix had come on board, and suddenly we were in a very real situation, where the film was actually going to go out globally to 190 different countries. 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