As an autistic kid growing up, the only actor I ever cared about was Brent Spiner (Data, from Star Trek). I never watched the original series as a kid, but after watching it as an adult, Data was obviously carrying on a role started by Spock, another all-time great. Maybe they both count as rare role models for ASD folks?

My favorite movie is this non-movie called Gizmo! (1977). (It's free on youtube among other places.) It's mostly a collection of old black and white footage of weird inventions. It definitely has neurotypical folks in mind as part of the audience, giving them lots of weird things to laugh at, but I could watch or scroll through info about random unique contraptions for days.

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[–] cooljpeg@beehaw.org 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Memoria by Apichatpong Weerasethakul. It stars Tilda Swinton as a Scottish orchid farmer visiting her sister in Colombia. She's woken one night by a loud BANG, a sound that then follows her, happening randomly, anywhere, inexplicable and out of her control. She pursues the source of the sound, and I'll stop my description there.

Right now, for me, this is the greatest most sublime, magical work of art ever created, for maybe too many reasons to state here, and at any rate it's best experienced than interpreted (of course, there's a lot going on in it that is worth discussing, but it is so welcoming to fresh experience that it feels kinda crude to list off reasons why the movie should be seen... maybe I'm being silly lol). However, I do wanna talk a little about how I feel this is such a uniquely neurodivergent movie. It deals with experience, intangible fleeting experiences that we live with, that follow us and direct us. No one else hears the sound Jessica hears, only her, and it affects her sense of the world, history, and self. I've never resonated with a character more -- her quiet, dogged curiosities and intense frictional dissociation are so familiar to me -- how it makes her body move, how she navigates conversations, how she ruminates (I've never seen a film depict rumination so vividly!!), how she folds in on herself, and where it takes her, or what...

Sorry if this is overly obtuse, I really want to preserve the transcendent mystery of this movie and I can't recommend it enough for neurodivergent folks. I tend to see Jessica as having ADHD, but there's a comfort for me in the film not belaboring the label, but just presenting what the world is like for us, and the purpose lying out there for those like us.

Honorable mentions:

Goodbye, Dragon-Inn by Tsai Ming-Liang
Computer Chess by Andrew Bujalski
The Trial by Orson Welles
Playtime by Jacques Tati
Perfumed Nightmare by Kidlat Tahimik