"My name is Steven. I am 48 years old and I'm a dwarf."So begins Denver filmmaker Steven Delano's unusual new documentary, No Bigger Than a Minute.What follows is neither an academic discourse on America's "little people," nor a project in self-affirmation in the face of social discrimination-though the film includes healthy doses of both. No Bigger Than a Minute has tongue-in-cheek re-enactments, a music score structured after Delano's own mutated DNA sequence, short-statured Hollywood stars such as Peter Dinklage ("The Station Agent") and Meredith Eaton ("Family Law") and musicians, rappers, comedians, novelists, doctors, and ordinary folk.Not to mention filmmaker Werner Herzog and an uneasy, and very funny, cameo by Randy Newman, singer-songwriter of the top ten hit, "Short People."

Steven Delano's No Bigger Than a Minute has its national broadcast premiere Tuesday, Oct. 3, 2006 at 10 p.m. as part of the 19th season of public television's groundbreaking P.O.V. series ( locally shown on Rocky Mountain PBS).

What really stirs this eclectic mix into potent form is Delano's own reluctant "star turn" at the film's center-a film he didn't originally envision appearing in at all. He thrusts him into his own film to delve into questions of humanity's treatment of difference, tensions between personal and group identities, and the future evolution of these contradictions.It's here that Delano faces the most untidy dilemma of all: In the brave new world of genetic engineering, when it is conceivable that dwarfism can be bred out of human populations, is this what we want?

With "little people," as many but not all of them prefer to be called, the dichotomies and contradictions that arise from their obvious differences are much sharper.And they occupied a disproportionate and fantastic place in popular culture, from the carnival sideshow to Hollywood.

Delano, after a lifetime of ignoring the question (he didn't even know which of theestimated200 kinds of dwarfism he had) and only five years after meeting another dwarf for the first time, finds himself wading through tides of media imagery of little people-and pursuing the behind-the-scenes realities that created the images-in his effort to understand what being a dwarf means. Then there is a modern dilemma:When is one being exploited and when is one exploiting himself?Much of the popular and minority culture, including dwarfs, is part of the national psyche, but it gains focus and force from Delano being, in fact, the first dwarf to make a film about it.

"The viewer goes on a trip with me as I learn and try to explain what it feels like to be a person with dwarfism," says Delano."Along the way there's been this bit of self-discovery and acceptance.But it necessarily meant that I needed to meet other people who had already achieved this self-acceptance.So we meet a lot of great and interesting people from all walks of life-dwarfs from middle-class upbringings to movie stars.And they help me explain what it feels like to be a person who gets a lot of attention, even just walking down the street, but also what it feels like to take control of that attention.

"It was important to me that No Bigger Than a Minute be different from other films about dwarfism," Delano continues."I was determined to avoid sentimentality and adjectives like 'inspirational.'Because of my interests in pop culture, I wanted to make something more on the stylistic side.And something with some attitude."

Credits:

Producer/Director/Writer:Steven Delano

Executive Producer/Producer: Diane Markrow

Cinematography:James Phelan

Editor and Graphic Designer:Chad Herschberger

Original Music:Jon Hegel

A Production of Denver Center Media, a department of The Denver Center for the Performing Arts.