I have been in Bristol during the past week, flat hunting and attending job interviews. Saw this exhibition advertised but unfortunately it finished the day before I arrived.
Resistance: which way the future? takes as its starting point the Nazi programme of mass-murder which targeted disabled people and became the blueprint for the larger holocaust. What turned doctors and nurses into killers? What stopped ordinary people from speaking out? And what does this history mean for all of us today?
Over ten years in the making, the film-based exhibition recently returned from its run at Washington DCʼs Kennedy Center, where a visitor wrote “One of the most powerful things I have ever experienced. I was so amazed by it, I went back to see it twice more.”
The opening drama follows the story of Elise, a patient who sweeps the institution in which she lives. She watches buses full of patients leave and return empty. When her turn comes, she knows what’s in store. Based on real events, this is the story of one woman’s resistance in the only way she could.
Director Liz Crow says “This is an episode of history that is virtually hidden, yet the values that underpinned it still echo through disabled people’s lives today. We can’t change history, but we can learn how to influence the future. The events of the holocaust came to an end because ordinary people resisted. I want audiences to feel inspired to get involved, be effective and find the courage to be a part of change. Resistance deals in a difficult subject but is infused with a sense of possibility.”
Open Tuesdays to Friday 10.00am to 5.00pm (closed Mondays). Saturdays and Sundays 10.00am to 6.00pm.
And what does this history mean for all of us today?
Indeed. This exhibition was being showed during the Welfare Reform Bill was debated during the Lords and MPs, rather a pertinent time to show the extreme realities of demonisation and scapegoating. And with present day reality of increased abuse and hate crimes towards the disabled. I ask myself, what does the past mean for all of us today, do we ever learn?
