- Welcome to Independent Lens.
I'm Pete Schwaba, host of PBS Wisconsin's Director's Cut.
Little people exist at the intersection
of hypervisibility and invisibility.
That is a concept explored in tonight's film
The Tallest Dwarf.
One in every 25,000 people are born with some form of dwarfism.
It is considered a disability
and recognized by the Americans with Disabilities Act.
In tonight's film, we meet a woman who tells her story
of self-discovery as a little person
after she finds and is embraced by the little people,
or LP community.
Julie Wyman grew up feeling different.
She is not what would be considered a typical dwarf
in that she is about 5 feet tall,
but has shorter arms and legs.
As a child, she was bullied for her appearance.
Once she became an adult,
she started asking questions about her body
and investigated her ancestry and the physical features
she inherited from her father.
Wyman learned that she and her father
both suffer from hypochondroplasia.
Wyman says when she received this information,
it was a relief, and that she felt goosebumps
and got a big smile on her face,
finding the information invigorating
as it made so much in her life make sense,
like why it took her longer to figure out a yoga pose
or do gymnastics as a kid, or learn how to dance.
Once she had the information,
Wyman went in search of community,
finding acceptance with other little people.
As it turned out, our leading lady Wyman
is also an accomplished filmmaker
and the director of her story in real life
and now a documentary.
Wyman has written several short films
and feature documentaries
over the course of her almost 30-year career.
The Tallest Dwarf took close to ten years to make,
and that's by design.
The director says her films take a long time to put together
because she likes to build relationships with her subjects,
which makes a film more personal and collaborative
between the director and her characters.
Wyman finding acceptance in the LP community is just the start,
and allows her to further explore how people like her feel
about height-altering pharmaceuticals
or limb-lengthening therapy.
Her process of taking her time
allows her to get more intimate and honest answers
from her fellow actors.
Director Julie Wyman is fascinated
by people who look different,
and even more intrigued by how they not only accept themselves,
but how they get there
and the community they form along the way.
She says she wanted to break new ground
in terms of how little people are portrayed
and represented in movies.
In a recent interview, she said it wasn't until
after she completed her 2012 documentary Strong
that she felt the need to tell the story about her own body
and her own acceptance.
She did it with humility and courage.
The result is an award-winning film
that made its worldwide premiere at the SXSW Film Festival.
The Tallest Dwarf starts now on PBS Wisconsin,
your home for independent film.