SCA alum perseveres in documentary
Derek Dabkoski will screen ‘Derek Changes His Mind’ at L.A. Live this Sunday.
By ALIA YEE NOLL
In 2006, Derek Dabkoski was shooting his thesis film as an undergraduate student at New York University. After wrapping a day of shooting in San Francisco, he was walking home from celebrating with his team. Just one block away from his parents’ house, a group of men threw him into a van and beat him up before throwing him back onto the pavement. Dabkoski fell on his head.
This incident resulted in a traumatic brain injury that left him partially paralyzed on the right side of his body.
In 2016, Dabkoski was working towards a Master of Fine Arts in film and television production at USC. His wife, Nadia Dabkoski, picked up the USC Trojan Family magazine, which had an article about a Keck Medicine of USC clinical trial regarding stem cell implantation treatment for people with spinal cord injuries.
While his TBI affects him differently than a spinal injury would, Derek Dabkoski called Keck Medicine for possible treatments. They referred him to a study by the University of California, San Francisco that would inject stem cells into the left hemisphere of his brain, with the goal of giving him some of his mobility back.
Dabkoski’s first thought was an unusual one, though maybe not far off for a documentarian: This would make a good movie.
“[Derek called me and] said, ‘I just enrolled in an experimental stem cell surgery study to try and fix my neuro damage, because I’m about to have a baby with my wife who can’t get her green card. Do you think that’s a movie?’” said Ian McClellan, who graduated from USC with Dabkoski in 2016. “I said, ‘Yes, I think that’s a movie.’ So we started filming his story.”
The footage turned into the award-winning documentary “Derek Changes His Mind,” which explores the stem cell treatment as it affected Dabkoski and his family, evolving into a story about their growing lives together. The film will be screened at L.A. Live on Sunday as part of the Awareness Film Festival.
While Dabkoski acknowledges the trauma and anguish he endured, the documentary’s tone remains lighthearted.
“I should have told Nadia it was a breakdancing injury,” he quips in the voiceover.
The title of the documentary itself, “Derek Changes His Mind,” is a tongue-in-cheek reference to both the stem cell treatment changing Dabkoski’s brain and the way the documentary becomes about more than his clinical trial.
“It first started off as a study of what can the medical experiment do for my physical well-being,” Dabkoski said, “but it quickly evolved into something greater than that — a story about family in the face of numerous different obstacles, and how we bonded together to create a tight-knit family.”
Dabkoski began the stem cell clinical trial in 2017. For the past six years, he worked meticulously with McClellan as his co-producer and former USC classmate Im Joong Kim as the cinematographer to create “Derek Changes His Mind.”
“Living in his world for a year, you realize that there’s not the level of help that disabled people need,” McClellan said. “There’s little gestures from organizations and people throughout the day, but disabled people are disabled all the time. You see how hard it was for him to get by and live just the normal life that most people are able to take for granted.”
The documentary, though about a serious topic, still strives to spread positivity. Dabkoski makes many jokes throughout the film. (Derek Dabkoski)
The documentary includes slices of the life of Dabkoski and his family as they deal with the clinical trial, his wife’s pregnancy and the fight to secure her green card. Kim explained that their one-camera set-up gave the documentary an intimate, naturalistic feel.
“Throughout the process, sometimes you just have to let go,” Kim said. “That is part of the big learning process of documentaries, [finding] a story within the footage.”
Dabkoski personally edited and narrated the documentary, which became a therapeutic way for him to face the effects of his TBI.
“I was able to look at that period of time in my life from a more objective standpoint and decompress everything that went on and put it in order in a way that made me feel comfortable with what I had gone through,” Dabkoski said.
His narration helped him reclaim the easygoing independence that his injury took away. Dabkoski tells the viewer jokes, points out ironic moments and calls his wife’s verbal slip-ups “Nadiaisms.”
“It’s a funny feeling I get, seeing your child develop their motor skills at the same time you are,” he tells the viewer. “But that’s the hand I was dealt, I guess. Pun intended.”
“Derek Changes His Mind” has garnered acclaim at nine film festivals internationally, including winning the Voices of Ability Award from the Portland Film Festival and Best Director from the Courage Film Festival in Berlin.
“It’s not like a popcorn movie; it’s not a slasher thriller,” McClellan said. “I think we’ve resonated the most with compassionate audiences that celebrate having kept those feelings [of pain and hardship].”
While Dabkoski celebrates these awards wholeheartedly, he said he is most proud of being able to share his family’s story.
“Despite certain things that may have broken our hearts, we were able to get through them,” Dabkoski said. “I hope that this can continue to foster that sense of positivity within the greater community, not only within the disability community but with a larger group as well.”
“Derek Changes His Mind” will be screened Sunday, Oct. 8 at 1:30 p.m. at L.A. Live Regal Cinemas.
