After 53 years enjoying the bright sky of the American West, John Kapellas has spent the last decade living in complete darkness. One day he started to burn, blister and break out in rashes whenever his body was exposed to light. Now he is allergic to the entire spectrum.
When one of the side effects of the drugs John was prescribed made him “go nuts,” he started drawing large abstract pictures on his wall and playing the piano to calm his mind and soothe his pain.
The documentary How to Make a Pearl explores Kapellas’ coping mechanisms and how he is turning the “grit” of past trauma into a “pearl” of reflective creativity.
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