Tommy and Daniel Copeman love movies – Harry Potter, Transformers, Indiana Jones – but trips to the cinema are rare. Like many people with autism, Tommy, 13, finds the darkness, flashing lights and noisy sound effects of the big screen frightening, often so much so that he has to leave a film halfway through.
Ten-year-old Daniel, who has Asperger's syndrome, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and also suffers from anxiety, enjoys the experience much more than his older brother, but finds it hard to keep still or quiet throughout the film. He likes to talk to the characters on the screen, and can be obsessively observant of small details. Watching Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull at the cinema, he swore he had spotted a spider crawling over the screen, and then wanted to tell everybody about it, and ask if they'd seen it too. The disapproving glares and hissed shushing his behaviour invariably provokes leave the boys' mother, Rebecca Brooks, feeling hurt and angry. Two more of her six children have austism, too, and cinema outings have to be meticulously planned and limited to off-peak times to try to avoid problems.
One in a hundred people in England and Wales are diagnosed with autism. Their enjoyment of the arts is equal to those without autism and yet their behaviour is frequently misunderstood and their needs overlooked. Last week it emerged that a 12-year-old autistic boy and his father ended up leaving a performance of the musical Wicked in the West End after they were repeatedly asked to move away from other people because of the noise he was making.
This Thursday sees the start of a project aiming to make cinemas, at least, a more hospitable environment. Around the country 40 Odeon cinemas will show Mr Popper's Penguins at special screenings tailored to the needs of filmgoers with autism: the sound will be softer, the lights will be left up at a low level and audience members will be allowed to make noise and sit where they feel comfortable.
If the pilot of Autism Friendly Films – a joint project between Odeon and Dimensions, a leading provider of support for people with autism and learning disabilities – is a success, such screenings could become a regular event. It's not dissimilar to the model of mother and baby screenings.
Dimensions hopes the project will not only increase understanding of autism, but also give autistic children the opportunity to get familiar with the cinema environment, allowing them to eventually attend mainstream screenings with their families. "People with autism have varying levels of sensitivity and it isn't something that is widely understood," says Gail Greenwood, one of the organisation's support advisers. "The flashing lights and loud sound effects during the trailers of a film could be amplified to someone who is autistic, causing them distress.
"Recognising small accommodations that can be made to the general environment of the cinema to make sure a greater section of society can know what it feels like to watch a film with family and friends without experiencing distress will be life changing for the people we support."
Brooks hopes the screenings will allow Tommy to watch his all-action favourites in an environment he can cope with. But she'd also like to see audiences in general become more accepting of her children. "People who complain and shush them are assuming I'm a bad parent. That hurts, because actually I'm not," she says. "I've even had comments that we shouldn't attend the cinema at all. My children are not rude, they're not badly behaved. They have autism and this is how they express themselves."
After all, she points out, the cinema is already somewhere where it's considered acceptable to move around a bit, to go to the toilet for instance. With new films out on DVD within months, patrons aren't watching a one-off live performance they will never see again, and nor is there any fear that an actor could be put off by noise or movement in the auditorium.
Plus it's not as if all other cinemagoers are perfectly behaved. When Brooks took her 15-year-old son Ben to see a film recently, a group of teenagers were messing around loudly before the film started. When the lights went down and Ben whooped, they asked Brooks if she could keep him quiet.
"My son has autism," she told them. "What's your excuse?"
• A full list of participating cinemas and details regarding locations, facilities and accessibility can be found at www.dimensions-uk.org/autismfilms
