Educational Media Reviews Online

After becoming paralyzed in a recreational snowboarding accident in 2014, Trevor Kennison’s 2019 launch into Corbet’s Couloir was a moment when his life dramatically changed yet again. As the first person to ski the couloir using a sit-ski, a type of adaptive ski equipment, that feat began Kennison’s career as a professional athlete. While this alone might be sufficient cause to give a documentary film tracing Kennison’s return to winter sports the name Full Circle, his choice to ski Corbet’s Couloir reveals that the circle is wider than just Kennison’s own story. Named after the mountaineer, filmmaker, and disability advocate Barry Corbet, who himself sustained a life-altering spinal cord injury following a helicopter accident, Corbet’s Couloir is yet another point where the two men’s lives intersect.

Kennison’s story is interwoven with and further contextualized by Corbet’s, particularly in ways that illuminate the kinds of lives that people with spinal cord injuries can or once did expect to lead. Prior to their accidents, both Kennison and Corbet were extremely active men whose identities and relationships with others centered around winter sports. However, Corbet was injured in 1968, twenty-two years before the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into law. The film depicts the post-injury period of Corbet’s life as a powerful challenge to the once-accepted notions of what success and fulfillment might look like for people with disabilities, ultimately paving the way for others, like Kennison.

Although Full Circle centers on Kennison and Corbet’s pathways as individuals, the film also highlights the social and personal factors that contributed to their ability to thrive with spinal cord injuries. Their lives seem to mirror one another all the more as their families rally support around them and they find new callings through disability advocacy. At times, it’s difficult for the viewer to believe that the two never met. This mirroring continues throughout depictions of their post-injury life in ways that are magnificent and mundane. Corbet and Kennison are shown continuing to live extraordinarily athletic lifestyles that defy ableist stereotypes. The film also challenges people’s beliefs about other aspects of disabled life. For example, New Mobility, the magazine that Corbet edited throughout the 1990s, pioneered coverage of topics such as adaptive equipment, sexuality, and active lifestyles for wheelchair users. When Kennison displays his adaptive “sex chair” for the camera and laughingly points out the well-worn seat, audiences might imagine that Corbet would approve.

In educational contexts, Full Circle could be well-suited for classes exploring disability justice, ableism, disability rights advocacy, the medical or psychological aspects associated with spinal cord injury and recovery, and even engineering classes that ask students to consider the design of adaptive equipment. Overall, the remarkable storytelling in Full Circle is its greatest asset and it’s recommended as an entertaining and compelling film.

Awards:
Grand Prize, Banff Mountain Film Festival; Audience Choice Award, Breckenridge Film Festival; Best Movie, High Fives Film Festival; Best Feature Film, Lookout Wild Film Festival; Winner, Student Jury Prize Mountainfilm

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