Ten years ago, Montrealer Paul Nadler at 30 was a creative maverick – snowboarding, rock-climbing and scuba diving, taking part in all-night play-writing sessions, attracting women, and winning awards as a hip television director. Then he was found alone on a road in Egypt, without clothes and I.D., comatose in the hot sun after a car accident. The doctors said he would never recover from TBI – Traumatic Brain Injury. His mother leapt into action, getting him back to one of Montreal’s leading hospitals, and pressing family and friends into round-the-clock attempts to revive her son from the coma from which doctors said he’d never emerge. From there, it became a series of acts of defiance against the doctors’ and therapists’ prognosis (he’d never see, never talk, walk, socialize or do much). ‘Braindamadj’d… Take II’ traces the excruciating process of recovery, both physical and psychological.
Paul Nadler
Paul Nadler, the subject of ‘Braindamadj’d’ was a firebrand artist in the world of television, before suffering severe brain damage in a near-fatal car accident. Nadler was the packaging designer for popular shows before creating the hit show Zone X, which he also produced. The brain damage forced Nadler to re-invent himself. He went back to university to get his Master’s degree in communications at the Université du Québec ŕ Montréal (UQAM).
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Braindamadj’d... Take II
Canada
2006, 50', color, video
Directed by:
Paul Nadler
Screenplay by:
Jonathan Finkelstein, Paul Nadler
Cinematography:
Bill Kerrigan
Edited by:
Zsolt Luka
Music:
Christian Clermont, Paul Nadler
Producer:
Jonathan Finkelstein
Produced by:
Apartment 11 Productions, CBC Newsworld, RDI
