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Click here to download the full flyer (PDF) What: Special Movie Event and Halloween Celebration for Families with Children with Special Needs Where: Public Library, 301 E. Main in Missoula When: October 29, 2010 Doors open at 6:30 p.m. Bring the whole family for this fun filled evening! Fun alternative to candy trick or treating Healthy snacks tailored for children with food allergies or special diets Family-friendly animated feature film Sensory-friendly movie experience Everyone is free to get up and move around

VSA, renowned artist Simon Mckeown, and 17 countries around the world are celebrating the International Day of Persons with Disabilities with screenings of the groundbreaking video installation Motion Disabled to raise awareness of disability rights. Mckeown uses motion capture, a technique used in feature films and video games, and 3D animation to explore digitally the movements of 15 people with disabilities performing activities from kickboxing to riding a bicycle. This mesmerizing installation challenges conventional ideas of motion. Watch the video online or find a screening near you. The 650 million people worldwide who live with disabilities deserve inclusion and access to equal opportunities. Because disability knows no borders.

The Instructional Innovations Unit is excited to provide an incredible online resource for all Montana educators. This professional development data base within the OPI website contains hundreds of video clips, lessons, and resources that can be downloaded onto your computer and iPod.  This resource is a direct result of the Montana Reading First project.  However, it also contains content for teachers Pre-K through high school.  Knowing that statewide professional development is extremely difficult because of the rural nature of our state, the Montana Reading First project director, Debbie Hunsaker, planned and initiated this resource called ‘Knowledge Box’. Throughout the implementation of the Reading First project, national and local presenters were filmed and the content was edited into short video clips, resources, and lessons. To access this resource go to the OPI website www.opi.mt.gov and click on Instructional Innovations under Programs. http://opi.mt.gov/Streamer/Instructional_Innovations/index.php#gpm1_5 For more information, contact BJ Granbery, 444-4420

Kim Peek, the autistic savant who inspired the Oscar-winning film Rain Man, has died, aged 58. Mr Peek's father Fran said that his son had suffered a major heart attack on Saturday and was pronounced dead at a hospital in Salt Lake City, Utah, the town where he had spent his life. Mr Peek was probably the world's most famous savant. Described as a confounding mixture of disability and genius, his astonishing ability to retain knowledge inspired the writer Barry Morrow to write Rain Man, the 1988 movie starring Dustin Hoffman that won four Academy Awards.

GLASGOW — The Assiniboine Tribe's rich and complex history is being told in a striking documentary, titled "In the Land of the Assiniboine."

Produced by the Valley County Historical Society and award-winning cinematographers with Camera One Productions, the film is earning high praise and even a place in national museums.

The Montana Office of Public Instruction plans to distribute copies of the documentary to schools statewide and the Smithsonian Institution is selling it at its museums in Washington, D.C., and New York City.

EDUCATION, DISCUSSION, NETWORKING AND FAMILY FUN! Booths staffed by representatives from local child placing and family resource agencies. Chat with representatives, find resources and see how you can make a difference for a child. Films and discussion panels throughout the day. Refreshments and children's activities provided. When: Saturday May 22nd, 11am-3pm Where: St. Paul's United Methodist Church -- 512 Logan Street, Helena MT

Alexandra Codina's Monica & David (pictured) is the documentary account of a young couple with Down syndrome--their romance, their marriage, their first year together. At first blush, it sounds like the worst kind of crass exploitation (a kind of nonfiction version of The Other Sister, perhaps). But it adopts exactly the right voice and perspective--one that carefully avoids cutesiness or sympathy, but sees these two (and the people around them) exactly as they are.

This month, Dorfman, now 22, will graduate from St. Joseph's University. He's a film major, a former NBC intern, and a paid mentor at the school's Kinney Center for Autism Education and Support.

He's also part of the newest wave of diversity to reach college campuses. As a generation of young adults - the first to be diagnosed with Asperger's as children - comes of age, it is demolishing stereotypes about its condition and prompting universities to respond to its needs.

Lives Worth Living is both an historical documentary about the Disability Rights Movement and a biography about one man's struggle to survive. Charismatic leaders of the movement narrate the story of a long, hard, and successful drive for civil rights — a drive that brought together a once fragmented population into a powerful coalition that created some of the most far reaching civil rights legislation in our nation's history. People with disabilities are one of the largest of any minority within our nation, and this is the first television history on the subject. It is a window into a world inhabited by people with an unwavering determination to live their lives like anyone else, and a passage into the past where millions of people lived without access to schools, apartment buildings, public transportation, etc. — a status quo today's generation cannot imagine.

Much of the growing prevalence of autism, which now affects about 1 percent of American children, according to federal data, can be attributed to Asperger’s and other mild forms of the disorder. And Asperger’s has exploded into popular culture through books and films depicting it as the realm of brilliant nerds and savantlike geniuses. But no sooner has Asperger consciousness awakened than the disorder seems headed for psychiatric obsolescence. Though it became an official part of the medical lexicon only in 1994, the experts who are revising psychiatry’s diagnostic manual have proposed to eliminate it from the new edition, due out in 2012.