NEWSDAY (CITY EDITION)
May 25, 2003

Disabled in Life, Enabled in Love:
Woodside couple featured in Sprout Film Festival Documentary
By Merle English

Ten years later, Marni Jamieson is still saying the words of praise she had for her husband, Christopher, when they got married on June, 6, 1993.

"He's caring. He's loving. He's funny. He's creative. He's strong. He's witty. He's smart. He's independent," she said one afternoon last week, while sitting beside her spouse in the living room of their apartment in Woodside.

Having a marriage that beat the longevity record of many of their contemporaries, she was able to add another encomium.

"I love Kris, because you're fun to have around," she said, addressing him directly.

Marni, 37, and Kris Jamieson, 34, are no ordinary couple, as viewers of a documentary titled: "Lifestyles of the Poor and Unknown" will realize when it is screened May 31, in the Sprout Film Festival at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan.

Both husband and wife are mildly retarded.

Marni's sister, Nancy Fliesler, an emerging, self- taught filmmaker and editor, made the 46-minute film over 28 days from late summer 1996 until mid-1998. Fliesler, of Arlington, Mass., said she wanted to show that people with developmental disabilities "are thinking, feeling people. If you get inside their life, you'll see they're not so different. They have the same hopes and fears and dreams as anybody."

She filmed her sister and brother-in-law on their jobs: Kris works as a stockroom-maintenance worker at Kids "R" Us, and Marni in a Goodwill Industries sheltered workshop.

The film also shows them involved in their daily activities: shopping, cooking, house-cleaning, throwing parties, watching television, laughing together. And she taped Marni at LaGuardia Community College, where she takes courses in the adult education division.

Making her debut as a filmmaker, Fliesler's "realistic yet loving portrait" of the couple is one of 17 shorts, animations and documentaries from the United States, Europe and Canada in the festival, which also is making its debut as a showcase for films and video "by, for and about people with developmental disabilities."

Her own condition, which she describes as a birth defect, had never dampened Marni's hope of walking down the aisle. In an interview before her wedding, she said, "To get married has always been my biggest dream, even when I was a baby growing in my mother's stomach."

But she felt her dream of companionship would remain a dream because of what others saw as her limitations. It came true, however, when she and Kris met in 1985 while attending an occupational training center run by the Association for Neurologically Impaired Brain Injured Children in Bayside.

"It was chemistry right away," as Marni recalled.

As clients of HeartShare Human Services of New York - a nonprofit agency that offers an array of programs - Marni and Kris are in the agency's Supportive Apartment Program. They receive daily assistance from residential counselors.

The counselors come to their apartment to help them "progress toward increasingly independent living and foster their personal dignity and right to aspire to their fullest potential," HeartShare spokeswoman Patricia O'Connell explained. From all appearances, the couple is making progress.

Looking back, they said their first decade of marriage wasn't smooth sailing all the time, an experience shared by many married couples.

"The first year was the hardest," Marni said. "A lot of stuff went on." After a honeymoon cruise to Bermuda, there were "ups and downs," she said, and a lot of fights. "Two years ago, we almost got divorced."

What caused the fights? "Different reasons," she said. "We don't remember."

But they resolved their difficulties.

"We talked to our parents," said Kris, who has more difficulty responding than Marni. "They told us to talk it over."

Marni said she's glad they didn't get divorced.

"I too," Kris said.

The reasons he married her haven't changed. "Her sense of humor, she's a good dance partner, somebody to grow old with," he said.

"I too," Kris said.

There are little things about each other that irk them though.

"She nitpicks me all the time," said Kris, mentioning as one of the reasons, "I go to the bank too much."

"That's one of his bad habits," Marni agreed. "Sometimes you have to say, 'No Kris, you can't have this, you can't have that, otherwise we'll go bankrupt.' I say yes, sometimes.

"That's one of his bad habits," Marni agreed. "Sometimes you have to say, 'No Kris, you can't have this, you can't have that, otherwise we'll go bankrupt.' I say yes, sometimes."

Theirs is a generally happy union, however.

"One of my favorite things to do is go out with Kris every Sunday," Marni said. "Sometimes we go into Manhattan."

"We buy chocolates," Kris said.

"Yeah, we love chocolates. Kris buys me chocolates sometimes, not very often though," Marni said.

They went on a second honeymoon cruise to Bermuda in April.

She would like to have children, but agrees with Kris that they can't afford them, her sister said.

Asked what he thought of the documentary his sister-in-law made, Kris said, "Cool," and noted that he supplied the title.

Was Marni happy with her sister's production? "You bet," she replied. In doing it, she wanted people to know "what it's like to have to grow up to be different ... for people to realize, yes, we have a disability, but we're also human beings."

Kris added, "I hope it turns things around, so that handicapped people have a better time."

Choosing her sibling as the subject of her first film was an idea that grew out of Fliesler's fascination with Marni, who is five years younger.

"I'd always thought that Marni was a pretty interesting person," she said, "even when I was a student in high school. I'd try to write about her in creative writing classes, but I never felt I could get her across, because she has a lot of contradictions. In some ways I think she's brilliant, and in others you can see her disability."

Fliesler and Marni have an older sister, Vicki, who is autistic, and lives at Camphill Village, a sheltered environment in upstate Copake.

Her own sensibilities were affected by the filming, Fliesler said. She gained "new respect" for her sister and brother-in-law, she said.

Is the couple looking forward to another 10 years?

"That would be nice," Marni said. "It would be nicer if we could make it to our 25th, then to our 50th."

"Sounds good," Kris said.

Tickets for the Sprout festival, opening at 11 a.m., may be obtained at www.GoSprout.org/film/tick ets.html. "Lifestyles of the Poor and Unknown" will be screened between 1:30 and 3 p.m.