Lessons from the Sunflower
DVD Universities, Colleges, Community Screenings: $295
(includes Public Performance Rights)
DVD: Public Libraries and K-12 (circulation only): $49
Digital File (Life-of-File MP4) $395
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DVD and Life-of-File MP4 $445
(includes Public Performance Rights)
UPC: 680044984018
Synopsis
The beauty and resilience of the humble sunflower inspires an artist's life, work and commitment to helping others face their own challenges following a devastating cancer diagnosis.
Lessons from the Sunflower is the inspiring story of one artist’s determination to make the most of a second go at life. Steven Csorba uses his experience as a survivor of a devastating illness, and the example of resilience and beauty in the struggle that he draws from a simple, common garden plant to help others understand how they too can overcome enormous challenges to healing, improve their overall health, discover a deeper purpose in life and ultimately find the happiness all of us yearn for.
At 38, Steven Csorba was a well-known visual artist, and highly-paid, award-winning brand strategist and corporate communications consultant living in Edmonton when his life was suddenly upended by a chilling diagnosis. Radical surgery saved him, but it also dramatically altered his appearance. He had to relearn how to speak and swallow. He endured numerous reconstructive procedures and years of recovery and rehab. Newly divorced, unable to find work, and with three young sons to support, Csorba felt himself rapidly sliding into despair.
That’s when he remembered something his late mother told him. Helping others is the key to finding true meaning in one’s life. Taking his mother’s advice to heart, Csorba resolved to use his own intimate experience with illness, the insights and knowledge he had absorbed as a professional communicator, and his brilliant creative gifts as a painter and graphic designer to support and mentor others going through difficult personal journeys. He has adopted the sunflower, that ungainly but hardy plant that just keeps climbing towards the light through stormy weather and drought alike, as an unlikely but powerful symbol of adaptability and resilience in the face of tremendous obstacles.
QUOTABLE QUOTES
Four in the morning on the second floor of the U of A Hospital, walking by the little chapel they had, I wanted to go in and make a deal with God, or whatever higher power could hear me. The deal was simple. I would spend the rest of my life helping others if I could just see my three boys grow up.
– Steven Csorba (artist and wellness advocate)
Head and neck cancer is devastating, as Steven would tell you. It hits you right in the face, so to say. It's who you are, it's how you present. Any social gathering we have involves speech and food, so if you can't do either of those, it robs you of who you are. Steven was a champion there. He said I’m not gonna be like that, and he fought and fought and fought and got back to an excellent quality of life.
– Dr. Hadi Seikaly (world-renowned head and neck cancer surgeon, board member Institute for Reconstructive Sciences in Medicine)
I knew he was bigger than the figure I saw in front of me, and I wanted some of that. I wanted some of that magic to rub off on me. I wanted to be around it. I didn't even know if he was going to live past the year.
– Nick Purger (Steven’s partner)
Credits
Directed by Ava Karvonen
81 minutes | May 7, 2024 | English language with English subtitles
Production country: Canada