It was one of the picks of this year’s online London Independent Film Festival – and Sean Cronin’s adaptation of Paul Hodgson’s FLIPPER’S SIDE, GIVE THEM WINGS, has since made it to Cannes.
(Main picture: Author / film-maker Paul Hodgson)
Film And TV Now were granted access to the book to commemorate the on-going momentum and here is a review of the book:
Premiering at the London Independent Film Festival 2021, GIVE THEM WINGS is an uplifting story of how a man physically challenged from a young age managed to find love and strength to achieve so much more than what some could have expected him to do. The film focuses on Hodgson (Daniel Watson) and his relationship with his mother (a career-best Toyah Willcox) and other aspects of what has turned out to be a very fortuitous journey.
ABOVE: GIVE THEM WINGS director Sean Cronin and Hodgson.
The source material on which the film is based on is expansive and no less entertaining for that, reflecting on Hodgson’s upbringing, his life-long passion for Darlington, which expands to include many of the home and away games, coupled with the financial troubles and challenges that the club went through over the decades, pinpointing specific matches and match-day experiences, but soberly brings up some of the major challenges that Hodgson has encountered by being in a wheelchair, having been struck down with meningitis as a young child.
Hodgson is an incredibly bright and insightful writer and certainly somebody with a lot more intelligence and perspective than his condition might give those who are more able might give him credit. This is a real eye-opener of a book, chronicling a multi-layer legacy of experiences and challenges old-time perceptions, whilst allowing people to embrace and get a real sense of what it feels like to be disabled and physically challenged.
It is also at times a very funny account, with Hodgson pulling no punches in his recollection of many of his experiences, as well as highlighting the key things that have hindered people with similar conditions.
Given the effects of the last eighteen months on the world, reading Hodgson’s story will give people inspiration and motivation to go out there and try to achieve something to fulfil their own self-worth. The book also touches on the challenges inherent in trying to bring the film version of the biography to the big-screen.
Read Film And TV Now’s LIFF review of GIVE THEM WINGS here:
