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Two filmmakers who examine romance for people on the autism spectrum will receive this year's Peek Award for Disability in Film.
The award, presented by the Utah Film Center, will be given to director Matt Fuller and producer Carolina Groppa at a ceremony Wednesday, 7 p.m., at the Rose Wagner performing Arts Center, 138 W. 300 South, Salt Lake City.
Fuller and Groppa are the makers of the documentary "Autism in Love," which follows four people on the autism spectrum as they navigate the world of dating and romance.
The movie will screen after the award presentation. After the movie, Fuller, Groppa and two of the film's subjects, David Hamrick and Lindsey Nebeker, will take part in a discussion moderated by Doug Fabrizio, host of KUER's "RadioWest." Admission to the event is free.
Elisabeth Nebeker, executive director of the Utah Film Center (and no relation to the film's subject), called the movie "a well-made, yet relatively unknown film that pushes audiences to reevaluate their own ideas of what it means to love and be loved through the eyes of adults with autism."
The movie and its makers are deserving of the Peek Award, Nebeker said, because they use "the medium of film, to explore a universal emotion and a disorder many are still trying to understand, as a vehicle to educate and inform in an accessible way.
The Peek Award, in its fifth year, goes to artists who have a positive effect on the media's depiction of people with disabilities. Past recipients include autism advocate Temple Grandin and actor and mental-health advocate Carrie Fisher.
The award is named for Kim Peek, the autistic math wizard from Salt Lake City who inspired Dustin Hoffman's character in the movie "Rain Man." The screenwriter of "Rain Man," Barry Morrow, has permanently loaned his Oscar statuette to Salt Lake City in memory of Peek, who died in 2009.
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