Film about disabled off limits to wheelchairs; The Waterdance to switch venues tomorrow

By J.K. Radomski

MONTREAL — While critics say a new movie about adjusting to life in a wheelchair is an inspiration to the disabled, the Montreal cinema that has been screening it for the past week is inaccessible to the handicapped.

The Waterdance is playing at the Loews on Ste. Catherine St. W., and the cinema can’t be entered by wheelchair - a double irony, since the movie is being screened during National Access Awareness Week. The Loews complex has two theatres that are wheelchair-accessible, but is showing other movies there.

The problem will be rectified tomorrow when the film moves to the nearby Palace theatre, said Mario Fortin, the booking manager for Famous Players.

The Palace is accessible to wheelchairs.

“This is the kind of thing that happens to us all the time,” said Roger Clement, 26, who has been in a wheelchair since he was in a motorcycle accident in his teens. “Disabled people don’t have the benefits other people do. In this case, we can’t even see a movie about people who face the same situations we do. It’s so ironic I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.”

Guy Boucher also found it impossible to see the movie.

“I don’t see the logic in showing a movie about the handicapped in an auditorium that is not accessible to the handicapped,” the 39- year-old wheelchair-bound computer technician said.

Boucher, who works at l’Association Quebecoise de Loisir Pour Personnes Handicappees (AQLPH), said he sees this sort of thing all the time. AQLPH is a handicapped-rights group, serving 200,000 disabled people and providing them with leisure activities like movies.

“Things have gotten better for the disabled in recent years, ” Boucher said. “But that’s only because the law obliges new businesses to create ramps and other access for the handicapped.”

Businesses like the Loews, which has some access, may not go all the way because they think a handicapped clientele is small, he said. “They may not have a lot of customers now, but that’s because they don’t have complete access.”

The film’s distributor, Norstar Entertainment Inc., denies responsibility for the gaffe. “I’m perturbed,” Norstar general manager Andy Myers said in an interview from Toronto. “That’s not what we arranged when we set up the booking.”

He said Famous Players, which runs the Loews and other Montreal-area movie cinemas, assured him that the film would be shown at a theatre that could accommodate people in wheelchairs.

“I was adamant about this when the film was booked,” Myers said.

Loews theatre manager Issam Mokhtar said he warned Famous Players that booking the film in a wheelchair-inaccessible theatre was a mistake.

But booking agent Fortin said he wasn’t told the film required a theatre with wheelchair access. He blamed the mixup on a misunderstanding.

For wheelchair-bound Clement, shifting the film to another venue is nice, but a little late.

“It’s good to hear they made the change, but they should have thought of it before,” he said. “For the disabled, a trip to the theatre is a whole-day affair. We have to wait for a bus, some of us need caretakers, and when we get there the show is over.

“I wish they would have taken more care.”

A member of another local disabled-rights group said the incident highlights the hurdles disabled people must overcome.

“It’s crazy that these kinds of things still happen,” said Catherine Roy, of We Integrate in Common. “They are showing something that concerns the disabled and I think it’s ridiculous that disabled people can’t see it.”

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