KING ARTHUR’S NIGHT

From John Bolton - the filmmaker behind AIM FOR THE ROSES, which POV Magazine called “the wildest, craziest, smartest doc in years” - comes KING ARTHUR’S NIGHT, a genre-defying documentary film inspired by a medieval musical play created by an amazing company of artists with and without Down syndrome, including award-winning playwrights Niall McNeil and Marcus Youssef; visionary director James Long; and iconic musician Veda Hille. Think: “The Green Knight” meets “Crip Camp”, but with songs.

“King Arthur’s Night” (the play) was a mashup of the Arthurian legend, and Niall’s best and worst childhood memories. Niall’s favourite place in the world is the resort municipality of Harrison Hot Springs, British Columbia, Canada, where a hotel and its pools might be mistaken for a castle and its moat … so of course, this is Camelot. Niall had a bad experience with a goat when he was a boy … so of course, King Arthur faces an uprising from subjugated masses of goats. Niall has a beautiful and complicated father-son relationship with Marcus … so of course, so do King Arthur (played by Niall) and the wizard Merlin (played by Marcus).

KING ARTHUR’S NIGHT (the film) unfolds in Camelot, as King Arthur and Merlin look back on their lives … and in Harrison Hot Springs, as Niall and Marcus look back on their lives. Other characters include the famous Guinevere, Lancelot, Galahad, Morgana and Mordred, and the less famous Magwitch, Saxon and Quelibel … and all of the performers who play them. Their guide - and the audience’s - is the legendary Lady of the Lake.

Brimming with magic, memory and metaphor, KING ARTHUR’S NIGHT explores themes of difference and disability, and asks questions about who gets to tell stories, and who gets to wear the crown. A deeply emotional and powerful story of fathers and sons, by turns comic and tragic, and real and surreal, it’s about the powers of imagination and inclusion to change lives and worlds.

KING ARTHUR'S NIGHT also pushes the boundaries of "access aesthetics" - the understanding that accessibility practices both remove barriers, and contribute to the creative vocabulary of a work. The film features "Integrated Described Video", or "IDV", for the blind and partially sighted - carefully considered dialogue & narration & sound design that does the job that "regular" described video does, without having to turn it on, and without "regular" audiences even realizing it. The film also features best in class captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing. Both of these features offer opportunities for truly accessible and inclusive screenings for audiences across differences - those who can see and those who can't, and those who can hear and those who can't, all gathering in the same theatres, having the same shared experiences.

KING ARTHUR'S NIGHT is an Opus 59 Films production, presented by AMI (Accessible Media Inc), with the participation of Telefilm Canada, the Canada Media Fund, the Rogers Documentary Fund, Creative BC and the BC Arts Council, in association with Knowledge Network. It was developed with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Creative BC / Rogers Group Of Funds Documentary + Factual Development Fund and Telefilm Canada.