Film: The Reason I Jump + Q&A with composer Nainita Desai

The Reason I Jump

82 minute film + a Q&A with the film’s composer Nainita Desai

Based on the best-selling book by Naoki Higashida, THE REASON I JUMP is an immersive cinematic exploration of neurodiversity through the experiences of nonspeaking autistic people from around the world.

The film blends Higashida's revelatory insights into autism, written when he was just 13, with intimate portraits of five remarkable young people. It opens a window for audiences into an intense and overwhelming, but often joyful, sensory universe. Moments in the lives of each of the characters are linked by the journey of a young Japanese boy through an epic landscape; narrated passages from Naoki’s writing reflect on what his autism means to him and others, how his perception of the world differs, and why he acts in the way he does: the reason he jumps.

The film distils these elements into a sensually rich tapestry that leads us to Naoki’s core message: not being able to speak does not mean there is nothing to say.

Joss - The Reason I Jump

DIRECTOR JERRY ROTHWELL

Jerry Rothwell

Jerry Rothwell is a filmmaker whose work includes the award winning feature documentaries: How To Change The World, about the founders of Greenpeace which premiered at Sundance and was the winner of a Grierson Award in 2017; Sour Grapes, about the biggest wine fraud in history, produced for Netflix and Arte; Town of Runners, about two girls in an Ethiopian village who aspire to be athletes; Donor Unknown, which premiered at Tribeca FF and followed a sperm donor and his many offspring; Heavy Load, about a group of people with learning disabilities who form a punk band, and Deep Water (co-directed with Louise Osmond), about Donald Crowhurst’s ill-fated voyage in the 1968 round the world yacht race. His latest film is The School in the Cloud, a film TED Prize winner Sugata Mitra and the future of education in a networked world. At MetFilm Production, he has also executive produced numerous feature documentaries.

PRODUCER JEREMY DEAR

Jeremy Dear

Jeremy started his career at the BBC in documentaries. He has created dozens of factual shows for a wide range of networks on both sides of the Atlantic, including the BBC, Discovery, Nat Geo, Science Channel, PBS, History, Channel 4, SKY and many others. Past work includes the Emmy-nominated Wave That Shook The World (WGBH/C4), Growing Children (BBC), Lawless Oceans (National Geographic) and the controversial series Christianity: A History (C4). He is married to co-producer Stevie Lee (see below). The couple have a non-verbal autistic son, Joss, who spends a lot of time on their large trampoline.

PRODUCER STEVIE LEE

Stevie Lee
Stevie began her career as a literary agent, before becoming a script editor and Head of Development at Contagious Films. In 2007 she launched her own company Runaway Fridge.

She produced the critically acclaimed Frank for Film 4, the BFI and Irish Film Board. The film stars Michael Fassbender and received its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. She also recently executive produced The Dog Thrower, written and directed by Jon Ronson and starring Matthew Perry, for Sky and The Making of A Lady with Jo Lumley for ITV.

PRODUCER AL MORROW

Al is an award-winning producer and Head of Documentary at MetFilm Production. Her latest film is Last Breath (Netflix/Creative Scotland/BBC). Previous films include Sour Grapes directed by Jerry Rothwell and Reuben Atlas for Netflix, Arte and VPRO; and Jerry Rothwell’s How To Change The World and School in the Cloud. How To Change The World (Sky Atlantic/ BFI/Impact Partners/CTV) won the Grierson Award for Best International Documentary on a Contemporary Theme and premiered as a Day One film at the Sundance Film Festival. Al has also produced Jeanie Finlay’s Pantomime (BBC Storyville) and The Great Hip Hop Hoax (BBC/ Creative Scotland); Sarah Gavron’s Village At The End Of The World which premiered at the BFI London Film Festival; Jerry Rothwell’s Town of Runners (ITVS/Britdoc C4) which premiered at Tribeca; the Grierson nominated films Donor Unknown (More4/ITVS/ Arte) and Men Who Swim (BBC Storyville/Arte/SVT/VPRO); Heavy Load (BBC Storyville, IFCtv, ITVS); and Deep Water (Pathe/UKFC/FilmFour) winner of the Grierson Award for Best Cinema Documentary.

COMPOSER NAINITA DESAI

Nainita Desai
Emmy-winning composer Nainita Desai is a leading voice in contemporary screen music, known for distinctive, emotionally immersive scores across feature documentaries, television drama and natural history. Her credits include Disney+/AMC’s Nautilus, BBC One’s The Split Up and Crossfire, ITV’s The Tower and Sky’s Funny Woman.

Her acclaimed feature documentary work includes the Oscar-nominated For Sama, The Reason I Jump, The Deepest Breath, 14 Peaks: Nothing Is Impossible, Nocturnes and The Contestant, alongside landmark natural-history series including The Wild Ones, Earthsounds, OceanXplorers and Secrets of the Penguins.

Desai won an Emmy for The Reason I Jump and has received RTS Craft, IFMCA, SCL and World Soundtrack Awards, with further nominations from the Emmys, Ivor Novello Awards, BIFA, Critics’ Choice and Cinema Eye Honors. Known for combining orchestral writing, electronics, experimental sound design and global influences, she creates a distinctive sonic world for every project, always rooted in story, character and emotional truth.

Music statement

Like the book upon which the film is based, the score opens a door to a constellation of divergent ways of experiencing reality. The aim was to evoke the intense sensory worlds of the book using score and sound design. If the sound design is a technical representation of the science, the music interprets the emotional response to autism.

Nainita started work during the shoot and wrote a lot of material based on the key ideas in the book without seeing the film, a very liberating process. She brought in musicians throughout the year of production, holding semi-improvised recording sessions which would then help the music writing process. One such musician was Elisabeth Wiklander, cellist with the LPO who is autistic and also the cultural ambassador for the National Autistic Society. In order to achieve authenticity her contribution has great sensitivity and perception particularly in the Forest sequence.

We wanted to blur the lines between music and sound design to create a cinematic immersive aural experience mixed in Atmos 360. The final sound palette consists of manipulated found sound taken from the film’s location sound, non-verbal vocals, strings and other organic and treated elementssuch as the ‘Halo’ (a hand pan), prepared clarinet and saxophone. All the sounds are created from organic sources – treating and manipulating sounds working in tandem with the sound designer.

Autists see the details in an object first before seeing the whole picture and so I portrayed this musically but having little broken elements than then come together. I utilised treated vocals that represented the non-verbal world of the characters.

So for example in the scene where artist Amrit rocks to the movement of ceiling and table fans, the sounds of the fans and other percussive found sound elements from the location create a rhythmic foundation out of which grew a musical piece.

Where the book describes the calm created by repetitive movement, Nainita created oscillations and repetition in the score to evoke a sense of cathartic release. Elsewhere, she worked with treated vocals (using original Japanese words from the book) to represent the internal world of the characters. For example, Naoki’s phrase ‘we are outside the flow of time’ is broken up into its vowels and consonants, sung in a fractured way as the boy journeys through landscapes.

We wanted to have a distinction between the musical worlds of the different characters, using different instrumentation. The challenge was to create an aural landscape that felt cohesive and worked harmoniously – this process resulted in a very experimental journey, sometimes constructing sparse musical cues from the music stems in the original compositions. 

Apart from the end song all of the music in the film is composed score.

VULCAN

Vulcan Productions produces stories and large-scale campaigns that entertain, inspire and activate audiences around the world's toughest challenges. Its films, television series and digital content spark ideas and turn action into measurable impact. Founded by the late Paul G. Allen and Jody Allen, Vulcan Productions creates content across all formats and genres, and spotlights their vision for impact in biodiversity, science, climate, technology, current social issues, history and the arts. The company also uses cutting edge technology to create unique experiences for its audiences, incorporating virtual, mixed and augmented reality. The team’s award-winning and critically-acclaimed projects include Ghost Fleet, X-Ray Fashion, The Cold Blue, The Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress – The Restoration, Ballet Now, Going to War, USS Indianapolis: Live from the Deep, STEP, The Ivory Game, Unseen Enemy, Racing Extinction, News & Documentary Emmy Nominee Naledi: A Baby Elephants Tale, News & Documentary Emmy winner and Academy Award®-nominated Body Team 12, Mind of a Giant, We the Economy, We the Voters, Ocean Warriors, #ISurvivedEbola, and Girl Rising. In 2018, Vulcan Productions produced the first-ever immersive reality experiences for the Holodome at the Museum of Pop Culture: Songs of Infinity: Journey into a Black Hole, Justin Timberlake’s Montana: An Immersive Music Experience, Seattle Seahawks: The Art of the Play and Death Planet Rescue. Upcoming releases include The Reason I Jump and Oliver Sacks.

BFI

The BFI Film Fund invests over £50 million of National Lottery funding a year into developing and supporting filmmakers with diverse, bold and distinctive films, that have a cultural relevance or progressive ideas, and which reflect people from different backgrounds, as well as a range of activities to increase the opportunities for audiences to enjoy them. It’s current slate includes Cold War which brought Pawel Pawlikowski the Best Director award at this year’s Cannes; Gabrielle Brady’s Island of the Hungry Ghosts, named best documentary feature at the Tribeca Film Festival; and Wash Westmoreland’s Colette starring Keira Knightley and Dominic West. Projects currently in prep or production include and Tim Travers Hawkins’ eagerly awaited XY Chelsea about whistleblower Chelsea Manning; Craig Roberts’ Eternal Beauty starring Oscar nominated Sally Hawkins, Alice Lowe and David Thewlis; and Untitled Girls Filmfrom award-winning director Sarah Gavron and producer Faye Ward.

IDEAS ROOM

The Ideas Room was founded in 2014 by producer Jeremy Dear to make factual content across a range of genres, developing and producing for networks like PBS, Travel Channel and Science Channel. In 2016 it became a single purpose vehicle for the production of The Reason I Jump.

METFILM PRODUCTION

Founded in 2007, by producer Jonny Persey, MetFilm Production is an independent production company making high-quality fiction and documentary films for theatrical audiences worldwide. Together with our sister companies, MetFilm Sales and MetFilm School, we provide a synergistic environment for both established and emerging talent. Films in post-production and to be released in 2020 are fiction film ’23 Walks ’starring Alison Steadman and Dave Johns and documentary ‘The Reason I Jump’ funded by Vulcan and the BFI. Other recent releases include thriller documentary ‘Last Breath’, comedy ‘Swimming With Men’, starring Rob Brydon and directed by Oliver Parker, documentary ‘Sour Grapes’ and the award-winning ‘How to Change the World’, which premiered at Hot Docs and Sundance respectively. Previous films include hit comedy ‘The Infidel’ starring Omid Djalili, Grierson-winner ‘Deep Water’, ‘French Film’ starring Hugh Bonneville, Sarah Gavron’s ‘Village at The End of the Word’, Jeanie Finlay’s ‘The Great Hip Hop Hoax’ and BAFTA-winning short ‘September’ by Esther May Campbell.

RUNAWAY FRIDGE

Runaway Fridge is a London based film and television production company that has built a reputation for discovering new writing talent and bringing highend, authored drama to the small screen. Recent productions include Frank, The Dog Thrower, The Making of A Lady.

About the book

THE REASON I JUMP became a New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller and has been
translated into more than 30 languages. It has sold over a million copies worldwide.

NAOKI HIGASHIDA - Writer
Naoki Higashida was born in Kimitsu, Japan in 1992. Diagnosed with severe autism when he
was five, he subsequently learned to communicate using a handmade alphabet grid and began
to write poems and short stories. At the age of thirteen he wrote The Reason I Jump, which was
published in Japan in 2007. Its English translation came out in 2013, and it has now been
published in more than thirty languages. Higashida has since published several books in Japan,
including children’s and picture books, poems, and essays. He continues to give presentations
throughout Japan about his experience of autism.

DAVID MITCHELL - Co-Translator
David Mitchell is a best-selling British writer whose novels include Cloud Atlas and Utopia
Avenue. He has been twice shortlisted for The Booker Prize and has received several literary
prizes, including The Sunday Times Prize for Literary Excellence. Alongside KA Yoshida, he
translated Naoki Higashida’s The Reason I Jump and Fall Down 7 Times, Get Up 8 from the
Japanese. His screen work includes Sense8 and The Matrix 4 (both collaborations with the
Wachowskis). He lives in Ireland with his family.

KA YOSHIDA - Co-translator
KA Yoshida was born in Yamaguchi, Japan, and specialised in English Poetry at Notre Dame Seishin University. ‘The Reason I Jump’ builds one of the strongest bridges yet constructed between the world of autism and the neurotypical world . . . [His] ideas are fascinating, but what’s equally remarkable is that an autistic teenager so profoundly understands the need to communicate them to others. “It felt as if, for the first time, our own son was talking to us about what was happening inside his head,” says Mitchell of first reading the book. I felt the same.’ Charlotte Moore, The Sunday Times ‘We have our received ideas, we believe they correspond roughly to the way things are, then a book comes along that simply blows all this so-called knowledge out of the water. This is one of them.’ Marcus Berkmann, Daily Mail ‘His description of the pain of autistic experience coexists with pride, and that is the book’s beauty, because he makes us long for his experiences’ Andrew Solomon, The Times ‘It reads effortlessly, each page challenging preconceptions that autistic people lack empathy, humour or imagination.’ Emma Claire Sweeney, Independent on Sunday.

Accessibility

Venue Accessibility

Please contact ramsgatefestivalofsound@gmail.com for any specific access requirements, and we will do our best to accommodate.

- Community Cinema Paragon Works is step-free access into the venue. 

- Please call ahead to reserve an accessible seat once you have booked your ticket.

- A small drinks and snack bar will be open to purchase refreshments. Free drinking water is available. 

- There will be an accessible toilet available

Transport Links

- The nearest car park is on Leopold Street.

- Bus: the cinema is a 2 minute walk from Addington Street bus stop. 

- The closest train station is Ramsgate, with a 15 minute walk.