Becoming Helen Keller

A feature-length film by Straight Ahead Pictures

Blueberry Hill Productions’ founder Laurie Kahn is a consulting producer for Becoming Helen Keller, an exploration of Keller’s life and the creation of our culture’s enduring saintly imagery (and bawdy jokes) about Helen Keller.  Almost every schoolchild knows about Keller’s dramatic incident at the water pump which happened she was a little girl; this film takes the public beyond that point, exploring Keller’s long, eventful life, examining her socialist beliefs, her work raising money for organizations devoted to the blind and the deaf, her performances on the vaudeville circuit, her diplomatic trips overseas for the government (including Japan just after WWII), and the cultural context in which her life – and the perception of her life – took shape.  The film will be shown as part of the PBS series American Masters in 2012.