“I am so grateful that I am a woman,” says Shelley Barry. “It is the reason I am naturally strong and resilient.”
At age 24 a bullet fired during a taxi turf war severed her spinal cord and punctured both her lungs. She would never walk again, and forever after must speak through a tube in her throat.
But the bullet did not destroy her career. It was a dream she had nurtured since the age of eight, when she saw her first-ever film at the local coloureds-only cinema in Port Elizabeth. It was the musical production of Annie, and there and then Barry found her calling: she knew she would be a filmmaker.
Her accomplishments have been as varied as they have been inspiring. She runs Two Spinning Wheels Productions, which specialises in short experimental films; no fewer than nine will be released in South Africa in 2011. In 2003 her film Whole: Trinity of Being won eight awards internationally, several of which were in the United States where she obtained her master’s degree in film. Characteristically filmed from the height of her wheelchair, Barry’s films are keenly sensitive to human emotion.
She has served in both the Mandela and Mbeki administrations as an advisor on disability policy and recently resigned as the programmes director of Cape Town TV. In August 2011 her first book, a collection of poetry, will be published. Still relatively unknown in her home country, she is looking forward to finally sharing her films with South Africa this year.
— Eric Axelrod
