Owls and Parrots

Robert Greens’ Owls and Parrots confronts the challenges of depicting the author’s own experience of growing up with dyslexia. The film subverts cinematic form by refusing to allow us a moving image, focusing instead on a locked-off shot of an empty school room. We listen to the halting voice of a young dyslexic boy reading out a script reflecting on the experience of navigating the education system with dyslexia, from primary school to university – the disjuncture between the tentative delivery of the child, and the adult perspective from which the voiceover is written creates an emotional affect that threatens to overspill the film.