How a ball kick to the head triggered a black comedy of sickness and mania
‘I’d been hit in the head by the ball my whole life. But this time I guess it hit me in the wrong spot.’
When Kenneth E Seligson was an undergraduate at Brown University, he was playing in an intramural soccer game that sent a ball straight at his head – a mundane moment that would trigger an almost unfathomable downward spiral, both medical and personal. In Nueva Vida, he recounts the acutely distressing tale of his subsequent sickness, mania and near-kidnapping in Mexico, while his brother, the New York filmmaker Jonathan Seligson, provides the animation. Despite the horror of the tale, Jonathan’s cartoon visuals and Kenneth’s deadpan delivery build a layer of pitch-black humour around a most harrowing chain of events.
Video by Jonathan Seligson
videoMedicine
Drinking wine from toxic cups was the 17th century’s own dubious ‘detox’ treatment
11 minutes
videoIllness and disease
Humanity eradicated smallpox 45 years ago. It’s a story worth remembering
25 minutes
videoConsciousness and altered states
‘I want me back’ – after a head injury, Nick struggles with his altered reality
7 minutes
videoVirtues and vices
Why Bennie tried to disappear, and what happened when he was found decades later
16 minutes
videoCognition and intelligence
A father forgets his child’s name for the first time in this poetic reflection on memory
4 minutes
videoLanguage and linguistics
Why Susan listens to recordings of herself speaking a language she no longer remembers
5 minutes
videoFamily life
One family’s harrowing escape from postwar Vietnam, told in a poignant metaphor
10 minutes
videoAnimals and humans
The wild tale of a young animal keeper, an angry tiger and a torn circle net
10 minutes
videoWar and peace
‘She is living on in many hearts’ – Otto Frank on the legacy of his daughter’s diary
12 minutes