University of Redlands Student Cody Unser Documentary Run to Start Tod...( ENCINO Calif. April 17 /- Wh...),Health

ENCINO, Calif., April 17 /PRNewswire/ --

Where: Laemmle's Town Center 5, 17200 Ventura Blvd., Encino

When: April 17, screening at 3 p.m. VIP and remarks following at 4 p.m. Pioneering female race car driver Lyn St. James will be in attendance.

What: Premiere screening of "CODY," the inspiring story of University of Redlands senior Cody Unser (http://www.redlands.edu/4653.asp). Narrated by Glenn Close, the film tells the story of Unser who was struck with Transverse Myelitis at age 12 and left paralyzed.

*Screenings will be held in L.A. through April 23. After its L.A. run, the film will be going to New York's IFC Center starting May 1.

Cody Unser, the daughter of legendary race car driver Al Unser Jr., will graduate from the University of Redlands in a few short weeks after crafting a degree in biopolitics through the school's innovative Johnston Center for Integrative Studies, where students work with faculty members to design their own degrees.

When Cody was 12, her breath went short and her legs numb during a school basketball game. It hit fast, and left Unser, of Albuquerque, paralyzed from the chest down. However, she refused to let that diagnosis define her and at 13 founded the Cody Unser First Step Foundation to ensure that money would be raised to find a cure. For the last five years, Cody has lobbied state legislatures and Congress to push for stem-cell research, which offers the key to her own recovery.

During the film, Cody shares her determination to walk again. The documentary, filmed in part at the University of Redlands, takes the viewers on an intimate journey with Cody detailing her daily emotional and physical struggles. The documentary maps the intersection of science and polit
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