Waubonsee Community College

Flying on one engine, the slumdog surgeon, directed by Joshua Z. Weinstein

eng

videorecording

For College; Adult audiences

Flying on one engine

electronic resource

747796000

directed by Joshua Z. Weinstein

50

the slumdog surgeon

This is the story of the inspiring work of 76-year-old Dr. Sharadkumar Dicksheet who continues his commitment to the Indian children on whom he operates every year. He performs free reconstructive facial surgery in marathon-like sessions, correcting up to 700 children who have cleft lips and other facial deformities. Without the operations, these children would be not be able to develop normally and would be treated as outcasts. The eight-time Nobel Prize nominee is treated like a living god from the moment he arrives in India, with a reverence bordering on worship in the communities where he works. Watching the people who organize Dr. Dicksheet s surgery camps and those who help him perform the surgery, particularly his tough-as-nails nurse, viewers get an extremely up-close picture of contemporary India. When he is in New York, Dr. Dicksheet subsists on social security in his ramshackle Brooklyn apartment, wheelchair-bound, living without a larynx, and diagnosed with a life-threatening aortic aneurysm. Dr. Dicksheet suffered a car accident in the 1970s, a battle with cancer in the 1980s and heart attacks in the 1990s. The film shows how this quirky, funny, and sometimes difficult character overcomes his own ailments by curing others. His stamina and commitment are truly staggering

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