Paul K. Longmore Institute on Disability - Superfest: International Disability Film Festival

Introducing The Longmore Institute Student Fellows for Spring 2018!

Visitor — Wed, 21 Feb 2018 22:27:02 +0000

Spring semester has arrived, and the Longmore Institute has expanded our team! Our Longmore Student Fellows program offers students with disabilities paid professional development opportunities, as well as a place on campus where they can learn more about disability communities, culture, and history. Please meet Anna Goose, Asa Arnold, Martha Jimenez, Lauren Wheeler-Dubin, Simon Hagene, and Robyn Kurland!

Anna Goose (Access Assistant):

I have a Bachelor's in Psychology from the University of Cincinnati, and I am a first-year MS student in the Clinical Mental Health Counseling program here at SF State. This program (formerly known as Clinical Rehabilitation and Mental Health) has already broadened my understanding of both my personal disability and disability in general, and has helped fan the flames of advocacy and activism that were first lit in my undergraduate studies. I discovered the Longmore Institute somewhat by accident, having received a forwarded email about Superfest, and was immediately curious about the organization behind the invite. What I found was this incredible hub of inclusion and accessibility, with a mission and values that are so aligned with my own that I knew I had to get involved. I'm thrilled to be part of the team now, and I'm looking forward to contributing to the fight against disability stigma and stereotypes.

Asa Arnold (Superfest juror):

Asa Arnold is a queer disabled student at SF State University, currently pursuing a double major in English and History. Disability has been a part of their life in one way or another for as long as they can remember, although they only realized this and began to identify with it recently. They are particularly interested in the intersections and complications of identity, social change, and the way we understand and tell stories about ourselves. When not writing essays or doing assigned readings for classes, you can find Asa knitting or crocheting, playing video games, or doing even more reading.

Martha Jimenez (Superfest juror):

My name is Martha Jimenez and I’m a third year transfer to San Francisco State University. I’m from Walnut Creek, a small town in the East Bay. I’m a first generation college student and very excited to see what’s in store for me here at State. I’m a psychology major and hoping to work with young kids in the near future. I’m very excited for the opportunity to work with the Paul K. Longmore Institute on Disability. I was diagnosed with both a learning disability and Scoliosis at a young age. I felt like I easily stood out with having an Individual Education Plan (IEP) and needing a back brace. Looking back, I realize how much these experiences have made a strong impact on who I am today. I gained a different experience than many my age but by no means was it a lesser one. Throughout my experiences, I’ve realized it’s hard for some people to understand and except those with disabilities. This is why I’m so excited to become a working member of the Paul K. Longmore Institute on Disability, where they strive to inform the community and change social views on disabilities.

Lauren Wheeler-Dubin (Superfest juror):

My name is Lauren Wheeler-Dubin and I received my bachelors from UCLA in the Theatre, Film and Television Department. I am currently a graduate student in the Mild/Moderate Special Education Department at SFSU. While pursuing my masters and teaching credential, I am in the process of collaborating with some very talented individuals to film a documentary about disability access. It is a wonderful honor to be part of Superfest.

Simon Hagene (Superfest juror):

Simon Hagene was born in Connecticut, USA, although he grew up in Norway due to his parents being from Scandinavia. As the years elapsed, he developed a great passion for acting, writing and the making of short films, and is currently pursuing his Master of Fine Arts at San Francisco State University. "Film is a wonderful piece of art wherein all of what I love come together. It is an incredible platform to introduce stories worthy of a cinematic reflection, especially on the topics that make my heart beat just a bit louder."

Robyn Kurland (Superfest Jury/ Showcase Coordinator):

Hi there! I am an M.S. in Counseling candidate at SFSU. As a civil rights advocate, both personally and professionally, I have seen ableism and mentalism deeply-rooted in our oppressive societal constructs. My personal struggle with a disability also provides a unique understanding and a passion to educate and collaborate for systemic and cultural change. I also happen to be an avid film fan. Movies are a fantastic educational tool that utilizes the cinematic experience to show commonalities in human experience. At the same time, they can tokenize, underrepresent, or misrepresent. Stories need to be told, but who tells them and how they are told matters. I look forward to working with the Paul K. Longmore Institute on Disability and being a part of this amazing experience!

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About the Longmore Institute

Anna Goose

Asa Arnold

Lauren Wheeler-Dubin

Longmore Student Fellows

Martha Jimenez

Robyn Kurland

Simon Hagene

Superfest: International Disability Film Festival

An Ode to the Service Dog: A Talk with Sonja Ohldag

Visitor — Thu, 02 Nov 2017 22:33:07 +0000

Leading up to Superfest 2017, Superfest intern Celina Gomez spoke with Sonja Ohldag about her film Chief. To follow the film on Facebook, visit: https://www.facebook.com/sohldag/posts/355631324847145

Celina Garcia: Chief is comprised of both still imagery and home-video style footage. At what point did you decide you wanted to fashion them into a documentary, and how did this dictate the type of footage you then captured?

Sonja Ohldag: I’ve captured most his training moments on camera. Taping and photographing for me is training diary, progress reports, it gives me feedback on things I could do better in order to improve chief’s progress and mine. The videos help me to determine how well we’re doing in our training schedule. People often times don’t know that legit Owner/Trainers follow individualized task schedules and have a system, which is geared toward their teaching pace and skills, and the dogs’ learning and progressing pace and skill levels. Service dog training for different kinds of disabilities require different types of training. As an Owner/Trainer, we have to discipline ourselves every single day to stay on track. That’s not always easy, but the picture material helps me to stay on track and provide consistency for Chief and myself. I like to have a journal, for mainly me, but also for others to see and experience what goes into service dog training.

Lots of Owner/Trainers have benefitted from the videos and wonderful conversations have come out of it. Those videos and photo material have helped me to resolve access challenges, too. Chief’s movie only shows fragments of it and I wish we could have put every single photo and video into it, but that would be almost 6 years of material. In short - the photos and videos, are for proof of training, self-evaluation and interaction with other Owner/Trainers and of course, for memories. I’ve always wanted to write a book about Jolanda, the dog I worked with before Chief. She was the book kind of dog. But Chief loves the camera and he loves to pose and I knew from day one that he needed to be on screen. People love seeing his photos and videos, which made the final decision easy.

CG: Prior to making Chief, what types of films or stories had you seen where you felt they properly reflected life with a service dog? What sort of influences did you draw inspiration from, or did you feel there was a gap in representation?

SO: Yes, there’s clearly a gap in representation and often times misrepresentation or underrepresentation. Often times people think it’s more than enough to always want to hang out with their dog to turn their pets into service animals, but that’s not how it works. Owner/Trainers are hardly ever mentioned in a positive light, which I find heartbreaking, but somewhat understandable since we have no representative who would promote us in public or share our stories, nor do we have the funds to do it ourselves. Lots of us have social media pages in which we try to help people access our world. Many people with disabilities literally put their lives on hold and spend lots and lots of hours and money on training their own dogs. We meet up for training and exchange tips, we help each other, we travel far for meetups and have to make all the phone calls ourselves. No one finds us “interesting” enough to follow us around… We have to organize those things and it’s really exhausting, but rewarding. We’re all dealing with daily struggles and the amount of effort and team work it takes can’t be put in words.

I want for people to hear the good things about us. I want for people to see and understand that we’re out there, our dogs are incredible, and they’re highly trained and carefully chosen, and how it isn’t easy to train your own dog while you’re the one who needs the dog’s help. I also want them to see this process, and how owning a service dog is a lifelong responsibility and takes continuous training. My inspiration is my life and the dogs I’ve worked with and people who surround me. It’s such a beautiful feeling when someone truly “sees” your dog and immediately says - wow, what a cool dog you have. I can tell it’s a well-trained service dog. Those are the people I’m grateful for every single day. It’s such a good situation when people ask sincere questions about Chief or training. We’re always happy to explain and educate and people even get to say hi to him when they are respectful and interested. Luckily Chief is perceived very well and people naturally feel drawn to him.

CG: What kinds of obstacles did you encounter as a first-time filmmaker?

SO: Oy...nothing major. Amir Jaffer generously donated his time and knowledge to make this film happen. It’s was a really amazing process. He was not familiar with owner training initially, so we spent lots of time talking about service animals and training. Many conversations were personal and of course, some subjects were emotional and challenging. But we took our time and worked our way through it. I think the process was an incredible experience. We had a few logistical challenges in regards to finding days to film and do the interviews since we both travel frequently. Some days we met up with other Owner/Trainers and we had to find dates to get us all together. Sometimes I just simply had a hard time finding the right words or was dealing with personal issues. When you live with a disability, the illness doesn’t necessarily define everything you do, but it does influence your days. But other than that, it was a really awesome experience, and I can’t thank Amir enough for being so reliable and for helping me turn my thoughts into an actual film. I can be challenging to work with at times, but he was steady and kept us on track.

CG: In a short amount of time, your film captures a variety of issues. Why do you think film is an important medium in spreading awareness on not only service dogs but also highlighting living with an invisible disability?

SO: Watching or hearing something is oftentimes easier for people to access. It’s less “time consuming” and people are more willing to watch a short movie rather than hear someone talk or read pamphlets or books, plus I find it more personal. I love all media such as books and film and audio. I’ve shown Chief’s movie many times during educational events and people respond with different emotions. Some people were speechless, others cried, many were happy and sincerely appreciated it. They feel connected to Chief and myself, which immediately offers a great baseline for any kind of conversation and discussions. Invisible disabilities are things people don’t like to talk about. There’s still a lot of stigma attached and people often times are judged. I’m at a point where I’m completely open about my disability and feel comfortable sharing when people ask. Chief is such an amazing little guy, he makes me look special. But it’s all him. Chiefie’s movie helps people connect and understand on a cognitive and emotional level. It touches them. I’m glad it does.

CG: Do you feel there’s been an increased skepticism towards guide/service dogs? What do you hope resonates with audiences after viewing your film?

SO: I could go on and on about politics and schools vs Owner/Trainers, and about people thinking they know it all, and all those “specialists” out there who think they’re totally rad.... I don’t think people are “more” skeptical toward service animals, but due to lots of propaganda and the media reporting all the bad things, people now think they know “all about it,” and they are now confronted with things more than they used to be. Not too many years ago any kind of service animal was rather a rarity. Today, more people do have legit service animals and they’ve become more public.

Unfortunately, most people don’t know how to tell a legit working dog from a pet in a harness or vest. There’s lots of stuff going through the media, but hardly any sincere service animal education. Often times people can’t tell a well-trained dog from a training school or from an Owner/Trainer from a poorly trained one. There are poorly trained legit service animals as much as there are amazingly well-trained ones. They don’t know how to look for behavior, connection between handler and dog, synchronicity, etc… What makes me really unhappy is how businesses often times make no effort to keep people with disabilities and their dogs safe. They are poorly informed about existing laws.

CG: What questions can a covered entity's employees ask to determine if a dog is a service animal?

SO: In situations where it is not obvious that the dog is a service animal, staff may ask only two specific questions: (1) is the dog a service animal required because of a disability? And (2) what work or task has the dog been trained to perform? Staff are not allowed to request any documentation for the dog, require that the dog demonstrate its task, or inquire about the nature of the person's disability. Someone with a legit dog, who has had proper training should, for their own protection, make no fuss and respond accordingly. Businesses need to take responsibility so others can see that the “service dog business” is a serious one and that lives depend on it. Skepticism often times comes from being uninformed or feeling helpless and results in accidental or purposeful discrimination. I like to give people a hand and help them understand. It’s not easy, and it is very exhausting, but it’s worth all the encounters we had.

CG: Finally, what do you look forward to being a part of Superfest?

SO: I’m just so so honored that Chief’s movie was selected for this specific festival - it means the world to me. Can’t wait for the festival to start. My best friend from Germany is flying in to be there for us. It’s just amazing. Looking forward to all the things :)

*This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

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Superfest: International Disability Film Festival

An Interview with Upcoming Superfest Filmmaker: Michaela O'Brien, Director of In Crystal Skin

Visitor — Tue, 17 Oct 2017 19:35:32 +0000

By: Celina Garcia, Superfest Intern

2017 Superfest Filmmaker Michaela O'Brien answers questions on her short documentary film In Crystal Skin, winner of the "Best of Festival - Short" award. To catch her film at Superfest, which will be featured at the 6pm screening Saturday, November 4 at the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life in Berkeley, buy your tickets today.

Director Michaela O'Brien

Celina Garcia: What made you decide to make this film? What drew you to this subject?

Michaela O’Brien: In Crystal Skin began in 2010 after I traveled to Colombia to work as a photographer with a foundation that served children in Bogotá. While shooting, I met one of the main characters, and her grit and optimism captured my interest. The film was born from that chance encounter.

As a two-woman crew, Melissa and I filled all production roles while living alongside our characters in their homes. This allowed us to intimately experience their day-to-day routines and gave a rawness to our storytelling. We did all of our fundraising from a grassroots level by hosting events in our neighborhood and crowdsourcing through Indiegogo. It took a lot of stamina to keep an independent film afloat over the course of four years. We committed ourselves to raising funds, taking the time to do so between work and graduate school, but our dedication to the strength of the film’s characters kept us focused.

Emotionally engaging and visually stirring, In Crystal Skin offers glimpses of the fortitude and courage embodied by those with Epidermolysis Bullosa (EB). This documentary highlights a dedicated network of patients, parents and doctors battling just one of the world’s 7,000 rare diseases. Our hope is that the personal experiences captured in this film will spur much needed dialogue about managing life with a rare disease.

Michaela Riding with Angel, Maria and Jackeline

CG: What were your preconceptions of Maria's disability before making this film, and what did you learn through the process? How did that inform your stylistic/filmic decisions in building this story?

MO’B: While making In Crystal Skin I have learned a great deal about hope and perseverance from patients. I am continually impressed with patient’s ability to remain positive in the face of adversity. The people I have met with rare diseases want to move forward in life just like anyone else, and they have dreams and aspirations which they live to fulfill. One of the most beautiful forms of intelligence that those with rare diseases have is the understanding of uniqueness, and how to be proud of it. EB and rare disease patients desire to understand and express their individuality and deserve that utmost respect for that courageous act.

There are many moments from filming in Bogotá, Colombia with the subjects of In Crystal Skin which stand out in my mind. One particular conversation was with a young mother named Jackeline, whose 12-year-old daughter has dystrophic EB. One day while filming she broke down in tears and expressed very candidly the difficulties of being a mother of a child with a rare disease – the limitations it puts on a young woman basically confined to the house in order to provide constant care for her child, the financial burdens it places on a low-income family, and the difficulties of wanting your child to be treated normally, while understanding the fragility of their physical and emotional well-being. We talked for hours and in a way it was a cathartic experience both for her and for me. The conversations I have had both on and off camera bring the film closer to understanding the uniqueness of managing life with a rare disease.

Maria Alejandra

CG: Why is film an important medium for increasing understanding of people with disabilities?

MO’B: Living with a rare disease which currently has no cure is tremendously difficult both for the patient and their family or caretaker. There is no end in sight for their disease or for the difficulties it causes. It can be a struggle to muster hope for the future when science can offer patients no resolution. EB is a disease of constant management, it requires intense care and maintenance, so though there is no cure, patients with EB hope for products and orphan drugs to alleviate their wounds and lessen the routine of constant care.

Filmmaking is an exercise in relating to humanity by putting yourself in someone else’s shoes. For both a filmmaker and a viewer, it can be extremely powerful and transformative experience. Through the strength and struggle of the film’s characters, In Crystal Skin sheds light on life experiences rarely heard of, but which are universally relatable.

Headshot image of Michaela O'Brien

CG: What does being a part of Superfest, where your film will be seen by a primarily disabled audience, mean to you as a filmmaker?

MO’B: I am so excited to have the film at Superfest! To have the film be viewed by disabled and rare disease communities was one of the ultimate goals of the film. With In Crystal Skin I hope to empower disabled individuals and their families to share their stories and give voice to those who are very much in need of further scientific research and increased dialogue to spur social change and resources for the disabled.

CG: What do you think about the newly audio described version of your film?

MO’B: Having the film audio described was an interesting process. It was difficult for me to get used to because it becomes so much more an auditory experience and I had become used to mainly relying on the visuals with less dialogue. I am very pleased that having the film audio described will make it more accessible to the visually impaired.

Join us Saturday, November 4 at 6pm to experience this important film for yourself!

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Epidermolysis Bullosa

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Michaela O'Brien

Superfest

Superfest: International Disability Film Festival

"Chipping Away at the Misrepresentations of Disability": Meet Superfest 2017 Featured Filmmaker Reid Davenport

Visitor — Mon, 02 Oct 2017 21:46:07 +0000

Documentarian Reid Davenport

Reid Davenport is an award-winning documentarian whose films focus on people with disabilities. The founder and co-director of Through My Lens, Davenport has been creating films and public speaking for five years. As a man with cerebral palsy, his hope is to inspire disabled students to share their personal stories, as he has done. He says that “there is a tremendous space for amateur videos now on YouTube and social media and a few people with disabilities have already grasped that fact and taken back the narrative and that’s what we want to encourage, take back and start to chip away at the misrepresentations of disability.” Reid’s short film On Beat, co-directed by Cheng Zhang, follows Larry and Tanisha Cotton, a Deaf couple with three hearing children. The family uses music as a means of bonding and expressing themselves. Davenport and Zhang discovered this family with another story in mind, having heard about Uber's efforts to hire Deaf drivers (Larry is a driver), but once he came across the Cotton’s gospel group, he knew he had a different story to tell. The Cotton Family featured in Davenport's film "On Beat"

Davenport and co-director Cheng Zhang collaborated by playing off each other’s strengths. Because “her strength was shooting,” and Davenport “was more involved in the interviewing,” they “balanced each other quite well.” Davenport also brought a disability aesthetic to the film, as he has in other projects as well, by “shying away from medicalization of the disability, trying not to make a portrait a pathological impairment, instead focusing on the social impact of being disabled.” The main thing Davenport wants other filmmakers to know is that with the proliferation of social media “the authority over the audience that they have is unprecedented so they need to tell their stories.” In order to share said stories, filmmakers can embrace the disability aesthetic and know that it is okay to let the disability in. Watch the trailer to On Beat below and buy your tickets to catch it at Superfest today: [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drlVa7UzEJM]

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Superfest: International Disability Film Festival

Russia Recap: Bringing Superfest to Volga Encounters Festival

Visitor — Thu, 25 May 2017 19:02:33 +0000

By: Emily Beitiks

When I received the invitation from the Eurasia Foundation to visit Russia and participate in their Social Expertise Exchange (SEE) Program, which has a disability initiative underway, I jumped at the opportunity to learn what is happening on the ground for disability issues. As coordinator for Superfest International Disability Film Festival, which always strives to feature an array of international films, getting to travel abroad and learn about disability in a different national context seemed like an important enough experience to justify the stress of being out of the office nine days, and even more challenging, time away from my two young children and husband.

After a 14-hour flight and a few hours of sleep in a hotel, I headed to the lobby, excited to begin my trip. In addition to four staff people from the Eurasia Foundation’s SEE program, I met four high schoolers and their teacher, all from Geneva, Illinois with no background in disability, who had won SEE’s “30 seconds to Russia” video contest. The students’ trip was paired with mine, as we were all to attend the Volga Encounters Festival in Cheboksary along with 400 Russian youths interested in filmmaking and journalism. While the students were invited to attend as participants, I was there to host a “master class” on disability in film, as well as an evening screening of Superfest’s past films.

But before heading to Cheboksary, we had two packed days in Moscow.

We visited the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences and met professor Alexander Solovyev, who studies the lack of job opportunities for people with disabilities. Responding to what he has found to be a pervasive lack of employment opportunities, he is publishing a paper that debunks some of the myths employers often believe about disabled workers. Like in the United States, stigma, not impairment, is holding back disabled people from reaching their full potential.

Wheelchair access to Moscow Metro. Very few stations have elevators.

As we headed into the metro, I put something together. I’d noticed a little track running along the side of the staircase earlier in the day and questioned what it was for. Seeing it a second time, I realized that it was the only means of access for a wheelchair rider to get down into the metro.

Our next stop was НАШ СОЛНЕЧНЫЙ МИР" / "OUR SUNNY WORLD," a lead organization in Russia offering community and education for autistic children and adults.

The visit was wonderful (and not just because they served some amazing Russian cakes and tea). They’d recently moved into a big new building, and as they took us on a tour (or “excursion” as all the organizations I visited called it), I was immediately disoriented. Every hallway and corridor looked the same as the last, but they’d open the doors to reveal exciting spaces for ensuring that autistic people have access to experiences that go beyond services – a room where a group of women sat around making paper flowers that they showed off to us, a theater space with photos from some of their past performances, a studio for film animation,and a model classroom where students can grow comfortable in a classroom setting before being mainstreamed - to name a few examples. I hope someday we will see some of the films they are making at Superfest!

In the evening, I trekked over to see Red Square and St Basil’s church. Exhausted, I returned to my hotel room, excited by how much I’d already experienced on my first day.

Day 2: We headed to Перспектива/Perspektiva, which actually developed out of the Bay Area’s World Institute on Disability. Their 70-person staff (which includes many disabled people) is working on inclusive education, adaptive sports, employment, and also preparing for their next “Breaking Down Barriers,” a disability film festival that was inspired after the Executive Director attended Superfest many years ago.

Meeting Tanya, Breaking Down Barrier’s coordinator, was a highlight of the trip. How often do you get to meet someone who does the exact same job as you in a different country? Close in age to me as well, we fell into a conversation easily. (ADD PIC). We swapped notes on recent films that our respective festivals had featured and compared strategies for providing the complex access features that hosting a disability film festival requires.

We uncovered differences between our two festivals too. Because Moscow still has a lot of work to do to make the city accessible, their venues are often only partially accessible, and she shared how they recently had to construct an accessible bathroom outside one of their host sites. In addition, Breaking Down Barriers has definitely been more successful at receiving mainstream media attention, and often includes jurors who are well known in the mainstream Russian film scene, a group we’ve yet to fully tap into for Superfest.

"Corrections Class" falls in line with "disability as tragic" trope.

When I shared that I’d be giving a presentation for the Volga Encounters Festival on common tropes of disability in mainstream American films, Tanya was able to confirm that they see all the same stereotypes in Russia, and provided a list of examples.

After sneaking in some last-minute souvenir shopping on the way back from our last meeting, we headed to the airport and flew to Cheboksary, the capital city of the Chuvashia Republic, over 400 miles outside Moscow. We were greeted at the airport by 5 students from the local university who were volunteering their time as interpreters for the Volga Encounters Festival.

We loaded up in a van and drove to the hotel with the American teenagers and the Russian college kids, all discussing their favorite American movies and music (most of which might as well have been Russian groups, as they were all foreign to me). Still jetlagged, I headed to bed as soon as we arrived at the hotel.

Day 3: The Eurasia Foundation arranged for the American teenagers to tour a local tv station, which includes a news show run by youths, and lined me up to be interviewed for their program. When I walked off the set, it was explained to me that the kids at the TV studio had set out a glass of Coke instead of water for me to drink, assuming this is what all Americans drink. And I thought I’d just be working to challenge disability stereotypes while over there!

We headed to the opening ceremony for the Volga Encounters Festival, which involved not one, not two, but THREE songs written specifically for the festival I was about to attend by past attendees. Though I couldn’t understand any of the lyrics, my excitement for the festival had still increased by the end. We then rode a boat to the main location for the festival, a children’s camp in a forested area off the Volga river that reminded me of my days in the Girl Scouts. I received lots of attention from Russian kids attending the festival while on the boat, who were eager to meet an American. However, by the time we reached the camp, word had spread that there were also American teenagers traveling to the festival, and while their celebrity status grew, so I was no longer the main recipient of all that celebrity attention.

Day 4-7: For the next few days, I hung around the festival, eating delicious food and giving presentations. I co-presented a master class with Russian filmmaker Georgii Molodtsov, who makes PSAs that change perceptions of disability. Together, we laid out strategies for avoiding the common stereotypes of disability through film.

After a sparsely attended workshop, I was pleased to see a full room for my evening screening of Superfest films. It was an ironic venue: a repurposed gym, surrounded by exercise equipment, but as the camp was originally built for health and fitness, spaces like this were what the organizers had to work with. I worried in advance: would the films that we select for our Bay Area audience resonate in a different culture? Fortunately, the first hand raised responding to the first film I’d screened (“The Interviewer,” Best of Festival 2014) put my concerns to rest: “That was the best film about disability I’ve ever seen!” The success of the session, especially in contrast to the low attendance of my master class, reminded me what I love about Superfest; films provide such an inviting, accessible way to transform people’s thinking about disability.

During my downtime, I continued to meet with some of the festival attendees. I particularly enjoyed meeting two students with disabilities. One student, Simon, shared a dream of starting a camp in Russia for kids with disabilities and envisioned it as a place where American kids with disabilities would come to attend too. I also met Ksenia, a young filmmaker in a wheelchair who was interested in documenting the challenges and strategies of traveling with a disability. She lit up as I told her about John Hockenberry, a wheelchair rider like herself who is an NPR journalist on “The Takeaway” and encouraged her to read his book Moving Violations, which includes experiences of his travel around the world.

By the closing ceremony, which included a remarkable magic show, I was missing my kids and had picked up a cold, so I felt ready to return home.

Day 8-9: After a day of sight-seeing in Cheboksary, I flew back to Moscow and then took off for San Francisco early the next morning.

So how do I take what I observed and use the knowledge I gained to help me better do my work? I imagine I’ll be considering this question for some time, but one lesson from the trip has preoccupied a lot of my thinking since I’ve returned.

In hosting Superfest, we receive a fair amount of films that might be very significant in their home country, but are rejected because in the Bay Area, the content will seem too basic. For example, we’ve seen a number of non-US submissions about how minimal access is in the filmmaker’s country and the journey to increase access. Our jurors often call these films “Disability 101,” whereas Superfest looks for “disability 201,” seeking to engage our audience with new issues in disability that go beyond basic access issues, personal journeys to accept disability identity, and the like.

Yet, as I traveled in Russia and learned about where the Russian disability movement is right now, seeing what access looks like in the metro for example, or learning that inclusive education has only recently been mandated and still only happens in about 2% of Moscow schools, I realized that we in the Bay Area could benefit from more opportunities to learn about what is and isn’t being provided for disabled people in Russia and other countries outside the US. Whether or not Superfest is the right place for sharing these stories, I’m still pondering, but regardless, I know that I benefited tremendously from this rare and privileged opportunity to learn about the experiences of disabled people outside my community. We cannot claim a victory for the fight for “disability equality” until it has reached disabled people in the United States, Russia, and everything up, down, and in between. Many people with disabilities have made this point already, but there’s nothing like leaving the bubble to help you see it.

Emily poses with Eurasia Foundation's SEE staff.

The views and opinions expressed in this blog are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the US-Russia Social Expertise Exchange or Eurasia Foundation.

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accessibility

disability

Eurasia Foundation

Paul K. Longmore Institute on Disability

Superfest

Superfest: International Disability Film Festival

tropes in media

Longmore Institute Director's NY Times Op-ed: The Price of 'Disability Denial'

Visitor — Wed, 24 May 2017 19:39:44 +0000

By: Catherine Kudlick

The following piece is cross-posted from the New York Times Op-Eds; see the original post here.

It was 1989 and I was immersed in my first teaching job, a one-year gig at Barnard College, with the possibility of something long-term. During that time, I had become friendly with a senior colleague named Bill. On our many walks along Broadway to grab deli sandwiches, we’d talked about our grad school days at Berkeley, the high rent of tiny apartments in New York and how to get the Barnard women to share our passion for European history in the small classes they’d asked me to teach.

One morning outside his office something felt off. Bill, who would be part of the team deciding whether to hire me, seemed nervous. Then he came out with it: “I’m wondering if you’d be able to guest lecture in my 100-person western civ class.” As I took this in, he added, “It’s part of, um, your interview for getting a permanent job here.”

I always knew my day at the podium would come. In fact, on one of our walks I’d asked Bill for advice about teaching larger classes. I told him about the details of my lifelong vision impairment and of my terror of public speaking, and asked about how I’d deal with calling on students when I couldn’t see them. In smaller classes, I learned quickly where people sat, and the give-and-take of conversation told me who was engaged. But applying this to more than 30 people seemed overwhelming.

I have nystagmus, a condition in which involuntary, jumpy movement of my eye muscles makes it difficult to focus, a chore that constantly challenges my brain as it frantically tries to keep up. As a child, my thick bifocal glasses and lack of confidence made me the brunt of cruel names and pranks, like being surrounded by kids who threw things on the ground and forced me to look for them. Later there were awkward, sometimes hostile encounters with potential landlords, dates and employers who I tried to brush off as a few gross kids who never grew up.

It had been a huge step to “come out” to Bill about the lifelong vision impairment that I thought I could hide. Starting in a new place with my doctorate safely in hand seemed like the perfect time to try on a new identity, one where I could be more upfront with others — and with myself — about what I could and could not see.

I remember the door frame with its chipped paint, Bill’s messy desk, the scuffed linoleum, the fluorescent lights that made us both ghastly as we stood on the threshold. I imagine an old clock ticking in the background. A soft, cracking voice — mine but not mine — finally broke the silence: “Is this something all job candidates have to do?”

“Um, well uh, no. It’s just that there’s, uh, concerns we don’t have about other candidates, about how you’d handle a large class, you know, because of your … well, you know.”

Of course I knew. At the same time, I didn’t want to know.

I paused, sensing that whatever I said next could destroy my chances for this job, and even future ones.

“I won’t do something that nobody else is required to do,” I said at last with a quiet force that surprised me. It was my first awareness of a visceral complicity between my body’s memory and my soul’s need to cry out — a feeling that one day I’d call conviction.

“I’m disappointed,” Bill said, “but of course it’s up to you.”

All at once, my nystagmus was on a rampage, not just in my eyes but throughout my body, from the hair on the back of my neck to my toes digging into the front of my shoes. I’m frozen. I’m tangled. I’m powerful from the force of it, oblivious and achingly hyper-aware. I want to vomit. I want to lash out. I want to run screaming.

Bracing against the door frame, I wondered how much of this was apparent to Bill. I said nothing, even as words formed: This is betrayal. This is wrong. This is discrimination.

It’s a painful revelation. The mind and the body fuse into one ugly knot of humiliation, anger, fear, doubt. You’re at this crossroads: You can suck it up and carry on as before. Or you can fight back.

All this happened the year before the Americans With Disabilities Act was passed. One of the little-recognized side effects of disability denial is that it inhibits the firing of the synapses that enables people to think of themselves as having rights. In other words, I was still many years away from believing that laws like the A.D.A., or any precursors that were in effect, applied to me.

But Bill and I — like most people around us and too many Barnards then and now — had been brainwashed in the same well-meaning society that still fails disabled people. We sat through tear-jerking movies where helpless blind girls groped and stumbled. Our heartstrings were pulled by fund-raisers showing blindness at its worst to raise money for cures that could be many years away. Images like these isolate people with disabilities not just from society but also from one another.

Though I am not fully blind, my vision impairment, and the challenges it presents, has made me particularly attuned to how others perceive blind people. Our words equate blindness with being out of control and clueless — phrases like “love is blind,” “blind rage,” “blind to the possibilities,” to “blindly carry on.” Such ideas slip quietly into our souls. They find their way onto playgrounds and into news stories, and before long they’re floating inside and outside of doctor’s offices, in sports competitions, film studios, policy debates. And in job interviews.

For the decade after Barnard it would be three steps forward, two steps back: a therapist who helped me ask if I’d rather imagine myself as an incompetent sighted person or a competent blind one; finding an exciting research topic in the history of blind people; discovering I’m a real ham when it comes to lecturing — the bigger the crowd the better.

But at my core I remained haunted and hurting. I couldn’t find a healing way to tell the Barnard story: Either every little detail poured out in a frightening rant or I clammed up, wondering if I really wasn’t qualified after all. Even as I researched and learned more about blind people’s history, I did everything I could to avoid being seen as “one of them.” Using a magnifier in public mortified me as much as the white cane I shoved into the back of my closet.

Then one day I met Bryan, a dynamic blind guy on the other coast who was several steps ahead of me on the journey. Each intense phone conversation upended years of denial and self-loathing. A wall I’d unknowingly constructed between me and the world began to crumble as I found strength and beauty in places I’d assumed to be off-limits.

He introduced me to the National Federation of the Blind’s Kernel Books, matter-of-fact stories told by blind people explaining how they did things nobody thought they could do: babysit, barbecue, teach. Each concluded that blindness isn’t the real problem; society’s responses to it is. Reading the first few, I began to sob uncontrollably. I had spent my life avoiding blind people, and in these pages I met scores of them living life with dignity. Now I was open to anything or anyone who would actively challenge my self-imposed limitations by encouraging me to embark on exciting adventures.

If Bill were still alive, I’d strut up to him with my white cane and proudly lead him to “Patient No More: People W ith Disabilities Securing Civil Rights,” the disability history exhibition I spearheaded. I would take him to the yearly Superfest International Disability Film Festival that my organization co-hosts with Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired in San Francisco to experience real camaraderie among disabled people and our allies. At both he’d discover captions and audio descriptions that he’d appreciate as someone entering old age.

Future Bills and Cathys need more fresh ideas like these about disabled people. Once freed from prejudice and shame, they can teach the largest class of all — society — to imagine people with disabilities as innovators, problem-solvers and true agents for change.

Tags:

Americans with Disabilities Act

Catherine Kudlick

disability history

education

LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired

op ed

Patient No More

Superfest: International Disability Film Festival

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5 Reasons to Buy Your Tickets to Superfest Today!

Visitor — Tue, 11 Oct 2016 19:45:31 +0000

With Superfest: International Disability Film Festival just a few weeks away, we encourage you to join us for the 30th anniversary celebration!

Screenings are October 22nd at 1pm & 6pm, with Party at 4:30, at The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life in Downtown Berkeley; and October 23rd at 1pm at The Contemporary Jewish Museum in Downtown San Francisco.

5 Reasons to Buy Your Tickets to Superfest Today:

1. It’s Superfest’s 30th Anniversary and we’re having a big party!

2. The festival is emceed by 2 hilarious comedians with disabilities.

Follow Nina G on Twitter @NinaGComedian

3. With a record number of submissions and films from around the globe, you'll love this line up!

4. Free access tours at The Contemporary Jewish Museum. Arrive early on Sunday for described and ASL interpreted tours of the museum.

5. Superfest is the most accessible film festival in the world—we have open captioning, audio description, live captioning, integrated seating for wheel chair riders, scent free zone, assisted listening devices, ASL interpreters, and more. Buy your TICKETS today!

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accessibility

disability

Superfest 2016

Superfest: International Disability Film Festival

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An Interview with Superfest Judge and Audio Describer Katie Murphy

Visitor — Thu, 29 Sep 2016 17:35:22 +0000

Continuing our series of interviews with the folks who made Superfest 2016 possible , Grad Assistant Robyn Ollodort spoke with Katie Murphy, former Longmore Institute grad assistant and audio describer extraordinaire. Katie's audio description is used for the film Like If..., in which an unlikely heroine emerges and attempts to save the world. Like If... screens Saturday, October 22nd at 6pm. Buy your tickets to Superfest now at: superfestfilm.com/tickets/

Robyn Ollodort: As a part of the Superfest 2016 judging weekend, I got to see your fantastic audio description skills firsthand. Tell me about your process in audio describing.

Katie Murphy: For the judging weekend, I was doing live, on-the-spot description without having seen the films before. So, that’s very different from creating an audio description track for a film. With live audio description, particularly for media I have not seen before, the process begins and ends when the film does. When I am watching, I make note of important details being conveyed visually and then wait for a moment of quiet in the film to describe those details. This is tricky when I haven’t seen the film previously, because I have no idea when those quiet moments will come up or how long they’ll last. As Cathy and Bryan, the two judges I was describing for, can tell you, this means I occasionally begin description only to stop after a word or two because the quiet moment was only one or two seconds long. Live audio description like this is very much in the moment.

Creating an audio description track that will be added to a film in post-production is much more precise, but also more time consuming. I start by loading the film into InqScribe, my favorite transcription software, and then using the timestamp feature to record all the pauses in the film. Depending on the film, any pause longer than 3 seconds is fair game for inserting description. I record 2 second pauses as well in case I get desperate for space later on.

The next step is rewatching the film and filling in the pauses with description. I do this in InqScribe as well, because it allows me to use hot keys to pause and start the film without having to toggle between a Word file and a media player. When writing, I time myself to make sure that the description fits into the pause. If it doesn’t, I revise along the way.

Depending on the project, I might send the finished script to the director for approval before recording.

Then I record, using my laptop and a USB mic. I probably do at least three takes (if not more) of each segment of description, because I’m a perfectionist, and the description needs to fit into not just the pause, but also the tone of the film. I don’t do funny voices or accents or anything, but I do change the pitch and cadence of my speech to match the genre and scene. If the characters are at a funeral, I’m not going to use my perky phone voice.

Once the recording is finished, depending on the project, I either send the audio file to the filmmaker or mix it into the film file myself.

Then I take a nap.

RO: At the judging weekend, you were very transparent in linking having autism and being a good audio describer; why do you think that is, and what makes for strong audio description and a strong audio describer?

KM: Being autistic informs so much of who I am that it’s often hard to pick out how my autistic identity specifically impacts the areas in which I excel. If I am weirdly good at something right off the bat (like audio description) or completely helpless at a given task for no perceivable reason (like juggling), I tend to chalk it up to being autistic. For areas that I don’t excel, I’m typically compelled (either by myself or some authority) to explain exactly how being autistic negatively impacts my performance. For example, I suck at juggling because of poor coordination and motor planning--two autistic traits. It’s rare that I am asked to explain how being autistic makes me good at stuff, so thank you for asking.

In the case of audio description, a lot of things I already do help me be a good audio describer.

Creating strong audio description requires the describer to sort through a ton of audio and visual data to present the most relevant information. This is something people do in their everyday lives, but for many autistic people the process is much more deliberate. Since I have issues with sensory processing, my brain doesn’t automatically sort through external stimuli, so I have to consciously ignore irrelevant sensory information and focus on what’s important. Since I do this pretty much every moment of my waking life, I have years more of experience than your average allistic audio describer. Sorting through this much information requires a lot of mental and physical energy, so I’ve developed a good deal of stamina.

But I do give myself breaks to prevent sensory overload. One of the ways I do that is by listening to audiobooks when I’m out and about. I do not leave the house without my iPod, my big headphones, and an audiobook (usually sci-fi or non-fiction, because I’m a walking stereotype). As a consequence, I spend hundreds of hours a year listening to professional voice talent, absorbing cadences that work, cringing at poor production aspects. All that helps me when I’m recording. I know what makes something good.

RO: Audio description traverses the territory of objectivity and subjectivity, in that what and how you describe what you see carries with it an implicit assumption of what is important; how do you navigate choosing the 'important' things to describe?

KM: I try to balance what I believe the filmmaker is trying to communicate with what blind and low vision audience need to know to understand the film. And that changes with every project.

For example, I’ve done audio description for performance art pieces where the visual details convey the story or message in very intricate ways. So my description would include details that would not be so important in a narrative film. It might be really important for a performance art piece for everyone in the audience to know how many oranges are on the floor.

But for a narrative film, unless the oranges are an important plot point, I don’t have to go into as much detail about set dressings. Instead, I’d focus my energies on choosing language that best communicates the story and the characters. I get to imagine how I would describe the character or action if I was writing a novelization of the film.

Audio description is layers of subjectivity piled on top of each other. The description is the describer’s subjective understanding of the filmmaker’s subjective artistic message and the audience’s subjective desires.

RO: So you audio described the Superfest 2016 film Like If...; is there anything we can expect to hear in that audio description?

KM: Come Se… is an Italian film, so in addition to me on audio description, you will also hear Jennifer Sachs (of the San Francisco LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired) dubbing the main character’s internal monologue. So you will have four straight minutes of three women speaking (one in Italian and two in English) in a science fiction film. Which is not something you hear every day in Hollywood.

RO: You worked previously at the Longmore Institute; how do you think your time there has influenced your perspective?

KM: Thanks to my time at Longmore I am very intentional about the language I use in audio description. By screening films at Superfest with open audio description (rather than handing out headsets upon request), Longmore argues that audio description is an access feature as well as a text in its own right. As a creative text, it’s not above criticism.

I think with audio description there is a real risk of perpetuating the paternalism disabled people experience by assuming that providing audio description of any quality is good enough. There’s a risk of film and television studios patting themselves on the back like, “Oh, aren’t we being so nice by providing audio description to the disabled,” and not really caring if the audio description is actually helpful or aesthetically pleasing. Working at Longmore showed me that people do notice if the description is good or bad. People do analyze the words that you’re saying. They do consider how you are editing the description into the film.

And that really encourages me to push myself and approach writing description with the same thoughtfulness and precision as I would a speech or blog post.

RO: Do you see a career for yourself in audio description?

KM: I would love to keep doing audio description as a freelancer. I really enjoy the opportunity to work closely with artists and community organizations to increase access and make something that sounds good.

If you are interested in hiring Katie to audio describe your film, she can be contacted at: catherinekatiemurphy@gmail.com

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Superfest: International Disability Film Festival

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An Interview with Upcoming Superfest Filmmaker: Jordan Melograna

Visitor — Fri, 09 Sep 2016 22:02:11 +0000

Continuing our series of interviews with the filmmakers of Superfest 2016, Grad Assistant Alex Locust spoke with Jordan Melograna, director and producer of The Right to be Rescued. A short documentary about the impact of natural disasters on people with disabilities, The Right to be Rescued tells the story of those disabled people left behind in Hurricane Katrina and what New Orleans and other cities are doing to make sure it never happens again. For more information about the film, visit the Rooted in Rights website. The Right to be Rescued screens at Superfest on Sunday, October 23rd at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in downtown San Francisco. You can buy your tickets to Superfest now at: superfestfilm.com/tickets/

Alex Locust: What inspired you to get into filmmaking?

Jordan Melograna: I’m a child of the 80's and grew up on Spielberg, so my interest in film began with science fiction, action, and popcorn movies. Later, watching The Thin Blue Line, Grizzly Man, Sherman’s March, and other documentaries convinced me that this genre was a better fit. My first real job on a documentary was on The Powerbroker, a TV documentary about civil rights leader Whitney Young, which sparked an interest specifically in human rights related subject matter. Part of my interest in the Right to be Rescued was inspired by Spike Lee’s When the Levees Broke. When I saw Lives Worth Living, I became aware of an entire civil rights movement largely overlooked in history books and it remains an inspiration for the work I do at Rooted in Rights.

AL: At the core of your organization, Rooted in Rights, is the desire to make films about important disability issues. Why do you think film is an important medium for promoting disability rights?

JM: Film is perhaps the most important medium for promoting the cause of disability rights. First and foremost, because it is both a visual and audial experience, it can be far more accessible than other forms of communication. In the U.S., we have a long history of hiding, separating, and segregating people with disabilities, whether in institutions, workshops, the special ed classroom or, increasingly, in our jails and prison. A camera can go behind those walls and remove the separation. And lastly, filmmaking is no longer restricted to filmmakers. Every person has the potential to make a film with the smartphone or tablet they probably already own. At Rooted in Rights, we believe strongly in providing the space for people with disabilities to tell their own stories, and they are stories that the rest of the population is unlikely to have heard before.

AL: How do you select your topics, and can you tell me about how you decided to do something on Hurricane Katrina?

JM: Rooted in Rights produces new videos almost every week, from short 1 min videos to short documentaries like The Right to be Rescued. We generate ideas for videos largely by listening to the disability community. There are many great bloggers and advocates who are doing great work across the world. We see our role as amplifying their messages and communicating their work to larger audiences. So we team up with Protection and Advocacy systems (P&As), Independent Living Centers (CILs), and other grassroots groups. For this film, we knew that the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina was approaching, and we felt that it was unlikely that retrospectives on the event would focus on people with disabilities. We wanted to tell those stories, and through telling them, encourage other cities to revise their emergency preparedness plans so what happened in New Orleans doesn’t happen again.

AL: In light of the recent violent tragedies in San Bernardino, CA and Sagamihara, Japan, what is your sense of the public perception around the disabled lives? Do you think that people outside of the disability community are making the changes needed to prepare for these acts?

JM: In a word, no. We were horrified by both of those events, but they are just the most famous incidents. There are other examples of people with disabilities being abused and killed by others who didn’t think their lives have value, even including parents and caregivers. And there are those who suffer the consequences of non-inclusive planning, like many in New Orleans. Fortunately, activists with disabilities are responding. They are pushing back aggressively with the message that having a disability does not mean being miserable. The recent protests against the film Me Before You are just one example of this. At Rooted in Rights, one of our digital storytellers made a video specifically addressing the Sagamihara incident. Storytelling is a great way to can change the public’s thinking, and hopefully, their actions.

AL: This film features a diversity of people sharing their stories of surviving Hurricane Katrina. Can you speak to your process of identifying a diverse group and how the intersectionality of identities played into that selection process?

JM: I should start by saying that people in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast in general are weary of talking about the storm, and the bad memories it brings up, and I’m forever in debt to those who chose to share their stories in the film. New Orleans to me is one of, if not the most dynamic, eclectic cities in the country, and I felt the stories should reflect that. So the way I think about intersectionality is really about authenticity. To authentically tell this story without people with disabilities who are immigrants, African-American, or from poor communities is impossible because those identifies are part and parcel to the city. In a wider sense, the disability community is not monolithic. To authentically tell the stories from that community, you have to tell stories that intersect with issues of race, gender, sexual identify or income.

AL: What has the reception of the film been like thus far?

JM:The most important reaction so far has been from FEMA itself. A day after the film was released online, it was shown at an event hosted by Portlight Strategies, an organization that works exclusively on emergency preparedness and disabilities. Many in attendance worked at FEMA. And we’ve seen that agency and the Red Cross begin to take these issues much more seriously. We've talked to Portlight about including the film as part of a curriculum for disaster management degree programs. The film has since been shown in cities around the country, and we’ve had requests from as far away as Warsaw and Barcelona. We want anyone who sees it to feel like they can use the film as a conversation starter, and as a way to show the potential deadly consequences of not planning inclusively.

AL: What do you want audiences to leave Right to Be Rescued with?

JM: I would like audience members to feel empowered to change the way emergency planners work and think in their own communities.

AL: Do you have any recommendations for people with disabilities who may leave this film feeling overwhelmed or inspired to make change but unsure where to start?

JM: All disasters are local, so start small. Contact your city council or local Red Cross and ask directly how they plan for the needs of people with disabilities. If you don’t like the answer, get organized. Call your state’s P&A or CILs and tell them what’s going on. The time to plan for the next disaster is right now.

AL: What does being a part of Superfest mean to you as a filmmaker?

JM: It is an enormous honor for The Right to be Rescued to screen at Superfest. Your commitment to films specifically about the issues important to our community and your insistence on screening the films in the most accessible way possible couldn’t be more aligned with our values. We hope that the festival is a place where we can connect to other advocates and continue to push for inclusive emergency plans that save lives.

Buy your tickets to Superfest to see The Right to be Rescued and more great films!

Tags:

disability rights

emergency preparedness

Jordan Melograna

Rooted in Rights

Superfest 2016

Superfest: International Disability Film Festival

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An Interview with Upcoming Superfest Filmmaker: Michael Achtman

Visitor — Thu, 01 Sep 2016 18:21:36 +0000

Enjoy this interview where Longmore Grad Assistant Alex Locust spoke with Michael Achtman, director of the film Awake, in anticipation of Superfest 2016. Awake is about the unlikely friendship that forms between two blind women: Anna, a woman living with Multiple Sclerosis is visited by Doreen, a door to door proselytizer who makes herself at home and stays the day, slowly defrosting her non-welcome. Together they walk in the park, bake a chocolate cake, and watch an Ingmar Bergman film. For more information about Michael, and his work, visit his website. Awake screens at Superfest Sunday, October 23rd, at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in downtown San Francisco.

Watch the trailer; for audio description of the trailer, click here.

Alex Locust: What was the inspiration for this film?

Michael Achtman: The inspiration for Awake was a 1963 film by Ingmar Bergman called Winter Light. The first time I saw it I fell asleep half way through, and went into a surreal, dreamy state. I ended up using that in the film, where Doreen and Anna are watching an audio described version of the Bergman film. Doreen says, “Is this the type of thing you usually watch?” And then in Doreen’s dream, they become the characters from the Bergman film. Bergman’s film is about a Swedish pastor who has lost his faith. I came up with the idea of a blind Jehovah’s Witness, which provided a way for two strangers to meet, one who has faith and the other who doesn’t. Faith in a larger sense, not religious but just to get through the day.

AL: Tell us more about the casting process - did you have a goal of hiring disabled actors?

MA: I know a lot of disabled actors, so basically I’m writing for and casting my friends. In addition to that, I’m very interested in the representation of disabled people on film, so it gives me a lot to work with. You create something and realise it hasn’t been done before – that’s powerful and very motivating.

AL: Describe your experience working with actors who are blind (accessibility features on set, scripts, travel, etc.)?

MA: It wasn’t that big of a deal. Scripts were provided electronically and we covered travel expenses. Margo and Alex, the actors, had support workers on set, whom they were able to pay through a UK programme called Access to Work. Otherwise, I would have had to budget for that. We filmed in Alex’s house, so she had a familiarity with the set; otherwise she would have needed time to get familiar enough with the space to make it believable that she actually lived there. The two guide dogs got along, which was lucky – they spent most of the time cramped together in a small room upstairs! If people are really wondering how to work with Deaf or disabled actors (or crew members), just ask them what they need. Sit down and have a chat before you go into production and try to envision every situation that might come up. But I would recommend doing that with every actor. You might find out someone has an invisible impairment, like dyslexia or pain issues, and that will inform your approach. Doreen, the LDS proselytizer, left, and Anna, right, sitting on a bench in a park.

AL: Some people in the community are frustrated with the lack of opportunities for disabled actors to play disabled characters in film. What advice do you have for filmmakers trying to cast disabled actors in their films?

MA: Go see their work and get to know them. It’s true, in the UK anyway – there are lots of fabulous Deaf and disabled actors who don’t get enough opportunities to stretch their muscles. When they do get cast, it’s as “the blind person” or “the wheelchair user.” Write something (or find a script) that isn’t all about their impairment – but more about character, situation and a believable world. That’s not to say you can’t deal with disability-specific issues – for example, the social service cuts in the UK are affecting disabled people’s lives hugely, and there’s lots of potential for drama there. But a film about that would need to focus on particular, well-rounded characters, who have both virtues and flaws. That said, you need to think about whether your filmmaking process is accessible. Money is such a big issue that we tend to work in trying conditions, with long days, on a set in the middle of nowhere, that doesn’t have an accessible bathroom. If you want to use an actor who has fatigue issues, for example, you’re going to have to take that into consideration when scheduling, using more shorter days, and budget for that from the start.

AL: While some of the moments in Awake are somber, there are some great comedic elements as well. Did you all have fun on set? Any stories you can share?

MA: It was a tiny crew, so we were like family, and we had a lot of fun. We shot the film in two days, so you had to either laugh or cry! There’s a moment in the film where the two women are passing a spliff – they struggle to find each other’s hands and when they finally do they break out in laughter. That was unscripted and real, and it turned out to be an important turning point in the film – it’s the first time you see Anna laugh or even smile. I was just praying that we captured that properly on film because we couldn’t have repeated it so spontaneously. Anna, left, and Doreen, right, in the infamous spliff scene.

AL: What audiences did you have in mind when you made this film?

MA: An intelligent, sexy audience like the one at Superfest.

AL: Can you tell us about the decision to make the film black and white?

MA: That was inspired by the Bergman film. I felt that aesthetic represented Anna’s world, and the shades of grey – well, I’m getting too arty. But it ended up having a lot of resonance because the approaches to life of the two characters are so opposite. Also, you save on colour grading! Doreen, left, and Anna, right, baking a cake.

AL: What do you want audiences to leave Awake with?

MA: I hope it doesn’t sound preachy, but it’s not your circumstances, it’s your attitude. Depression is not something you can snap your fingers and make vanish, but sometimes a little human contact and compassion can turn things in another direction. In a wider sense, I think the films creates an identification with two blind women in a way that makes their lives seem ordinary. The drama is not about their impairments, it’s about the clashing of their temperaments and philosophies.

AL: What does being a part of Superfest mean to you as a filmmaker?

MA: We’re very honoured to be part of such a prestigious festival, and excited to show the film to the Bay Area audience. The Superfest mandate is sophisticated – you’ve seen the traditional representations of disability and you’re trying to show something different – and that’s exactly what the film is trying to do.

Buy your tickets to Superfest to catch Awake and more great films!

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Superfest: International Disability Film Festival

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