You don’t get to see acupuncture, herbs and Chinese medicine feature in too many movies unless like me you’re partial to Kung fu films, Hong Kong cinema and Chinese historical epics. So I feel I must share with you this acupuncture documentary that I seen recently, its called 9000 Needles, and I’ll let you know why later though I think you can guess.
This isn’t a Jet Li joint, a Jackie Chan day in a life or anything like that, but a real story of a real guy called Devin Dearth, a 40 year old father of 3, who has a brain stem bleed and is told he’ll probably never walk again.
The American health care system being broken, his insurance company wont pay for his rehab and the only option left for his family is to take him to China and try a rehab program in a Teaching Hospital in Tianjin, China.
This is an emotional story of a family going through some really tough times, and shows the sheer determination and strength of the human spirit to cope and fight thru. You’ll cry with his family and cheer him on as he makes progress, and you get a chance to see him go thru the treatment which includes lots of acupuncture, Chinese herbs, cupping, bleeding, herbal soaks, tui na, physical therapy and more.
His Chinese doctors are absolutely brilliant, they kinda remind me of some of my teachers, and they poke him with 9157 needles in his 3 months stay, there or thereabouts, hence the name.
You can see 9000 Needles on the big screen at the Colchester Arts Centre, for one night only! Friday July 8th 2011 at 19:30 for Β£10 Check it out!
Here is a 5 minute cut from the film and thanks to Devin and the entire Dearth family for the inspiration.
