Kristen Powers“Twitch,” a documentary film chronicling the emotional journey of an 18-year-old as she is tested for a degenerative genetic disease, will be screened on the campus of the University of Alabama at Birmingham at 1 p.m., Wednesday, Sept. 10, at Volker Hall, 1670 University Blvd.Kristen Powers, the producer and star of the film, will be at the screening of her movie, which follows her genetic testing for Huntington’s disease, a neurological brain disorder that led to the death of her mother. Every child of a parent with HD has a 50 percent chance of inheriting the fatal gene, which means Powers and her younger brothers are at risk of also developing Huntington’s disease.
Join Powers for a question and answer session following the screening. The event, hosted by the School of Health Professions Genetic Counseling Program in conjunction with the Department of Genetics in the School of Medicine, is free and open to the public.
This is the first documentary for Powers, a junior at Stanford University, and she hopes the story will spark conversations about genetic testing and the implications of making the choice to test, as well as remove the stigma surrounding neurological diseases. She raised more than $45,000 using crowd-funding platforms to fund this film.