Paul K. Longmore Institute on Disability - superfest 2019

Superfest 2019: Recap

Ginger Testerman — Fri, 25 Oct 2019 22:58:46 +0000

Superfest 2019 is one for the books! Thank you to everyone who attended, supported, encouraged from afar, or volunteered at the 33rd Superfest Disability Film Festival: the event was a huge success!

We screened fifteen films for packed houses over the course of two days in downtown San Francisco and downtown Berkeley. This year we were able to host a bigger audience than ever before, thanks to our larger Berkeley venue and adding a second screening at the Contemporary Jewish Museum. Thank you to Freight & Salvage and The Contemporary Jewish Museum for hosting this unique event!

During the festival, we hosted three panel discussions that explored disability filmmaking, access as an art form, representations, and the jury selection process. A theme emerged in all three panels: we need more films made by and for disabled people in Hollywood.

Here's a brief overview of all three screening events at Superfest:

Saturday we were in downtown Berkeley at The Freight and Salvage, showing five shorts and one feature. The films were shot and filmed in the US, UK, Australia, and Germany. The screening included a panel discussion with disabled filmmakers/actors from Gaslit, Invalid Corps, and Song for Rent, moderated by former Superfest filmmaker and 2018-2019 Juror, Reid Davenport.

The films showcased covered a range of topics from Aneta Brodski (of Deaf Jam) a deaf teen living in New York City who discovers the power of ASL poetry as she prepares to be one of the first deaf poets to compete in a spoken-word slam to the complex story of a young disabled woman (in Gaslit) who fights to hold on to her identity in the face of the world’s assumptions and strives for independence from her parents, who doubt her ability to become a mother.

On Sunday morning we had a short film program which featured seven films from five countries, looking at a range of topics from the beauty and fear of daily life with dementia in the Oscar-nominated short Late Afternoon to the activism of a polio-survivor who has spent his life planting trees in Burkina Faso. This screening featured open audio description, though we provided an adjacent screening room for people who prefer to watch without this feature.

Following the screening, disability trainer, Superfest juror, and Glamputee Alex Locust moderated a discussion with filmmaker Cheryl Green (Stinky Chicken Dog 2 and audio describer for Inclinations, Late Afternoon and Chin Up).

Later in the afternoon on Sunday, we had our final screening of the festival. In this closed audio description screening (open audio description was provided in an adjacent screening room), we explored two powerful stories of disability outside the U.S. with a short film from Iran and a feature film from India. These stories were deeply moving-- though completely different topics, celebrating how disability can bring people together, which is certainly a sharp contrast to the mainstream stories that circulate around disability.

Excellent films abounded, but the film festival simply could not have happened without the tremendous help from our certified festival volunteers. Each and everyone fulfilled vital roles from handing-out programs to operating the concessions stand.

Of particular note was ticket-taker, Eric Hunt. Much to the organizers’ surprise, this bright-eyed and eager-to-help volunteer hadn’t actually signed up to volunteer in advance, but was quickly discovered to be Dr. Eric Hunt, father to Longmore Student Fellow Maxfield Hunt, who had surprised his son and wanted to show him his support! Thank you, Eric and all the other volunteers for their dedication to making this year’s Superfest run seamlessly!

That Superfest 2019 is complete is bittersweet because this was the Longmore Institute’s final year partnering with LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired to run the festival. Thanks to their partnership we have grown the festival in films, audience, and quality since we hosted our first event together, The Dissies, back in 2013. We are very grateful for these years of collaboration.

And, finally: a quick shout-out to our film selection committee of 100% jurors with disabilities! Every year, we get hundreds of submissions for Superfest and we appreciate the dedication and care that goes into each screening and the entire decision-making process. Interested in being on the jury for 2020? Contact Emily Beitiks.

Have a disability-centered film you’d like to submit for consideration for Superfest 2020? Applications open in December - spread the word! Visit http://www.superfestfilm.com/submissions for more details.

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Read about Superfest from a Juror's Perspective!

Ginger Testerman — Wed, 02 Oct 2019 16:53:15 +0000

A New Superfest Juror Opens up about his Experience

by Matthew S. Alaniz

It’s no wonder the fantastical word “super” entered my mind the first time I flew over San Francisco and its northern neighbors. The term “super-bly” (see what I did there?) describes the weather, architecture, food, people, and what my big brown eyes first caught sight of from my tiny airplane window -- the proud and prominent Golden Gate bridge. As my plane taxied, I kept thinking about that bridge. I remembered studying the iconic structure in Architecture school. Like most great things, it took a significant amount of power, persistence, and people to construct. It’s a beautiful portrait of humanity’s spirit in the form of steel, concrete, and solidarity. That same spirit, with its sense of pride, community, and culture was reflected and shone on me as a now curious screenwriter and script consultant visiting Superfest Disability Film Festival all the way from Austin, Texas. And just as the city it calls home lives up to that fantastical word, I would soon find out that Superfest, too, does its moniker proud.

Some years back, a few minutes on the internet led me to Superfest’s website. I saw this cool YouTube video of a past year’s festival and it just spoke to me. They spoke to me -- the films, the filmmakers, the runners of the festival, the attendees. When the video stopped, I knew I had to go and so, I did. The following year I flew out to The Bay (Can call it that now?) to check out Superfest. I saw some amazing films, met even more amazing people and experienced a culture that I had been missing out on my entire life. For the first time, I saw myself represented in the ideas, images and words of a community of talented artists. Here’s a group of filmmakers, from all walks of life, who refuse to create art that does not constitute the entire spectrum of disability in cinema. Now, when I say the “entire spectrum of disability” I simply mean that the diverseness within the disability culture is just as diverse as disability is to the diverseness of -- Hold up, wait a minute! Let me regroup.

I’m what some people might call “mainstreamed.” That’s just a politically correct way of saying I attended school with children lacking disabilities. I went to “mainstream” University, twice, because I wasn’t too good at the first thing even though I have a fancy piece of paper that says I’m great at it. My first “real” job was at an architecture firm where I became an expert at designing all the stuff nobody cares about when you flip through an Architectural Digest (that’s a magazine for you Millennials). I had spent most of my life around “able-bodied” people. I never really interacted with kids who had special needs. I didn’t have a reason to be around other disabled people... or at least I thought I didn’t.

Being an eighties baby and a nineties child, I was exposed to some of the best music, movies and television of all time. Now, despite the obvious loyalty to my generation’s contribution to American pop culture, as I grew older, I realized I wasn’t seeing myself on the big screen or little screen for that matter, at least not in ways I agreed with. I wasn’t being represented -- honestly represented. I also had a hard time finding Latinx people, unless I stumbled upon the Spanish channels. Oh yeah... I’m Latinx as well --Double Whammy. So, where were the people who looked like me, who spoke like me? Where were the characters who shared my views, passions and concerns?

They simply weren’t there, or if they were, the portrayal usually lacked authenticity and was downright offensive.

Of course, Superfest embraced and exemplified diversity, inclusion and all those other politically correct words used to describe what’s been missing in cinema for so long, but my experience at Superfest that year went beyond the political. It wasn’t just social or cultural. For me, it was deeply personal. I saw stories that reflected my views, my thoughts, my experiences. I saw me. Representations of me. Characters and actors who gave themselves over to the camera. It was honest and unbridled. Some of it was hilarious, some of it was painful, but it was all human. It was so incredible, I felt it necessary to introduce myself to the festival runners. Pleasantries and business cards were exchanged, typical festival etiquette, and I left San Francisco with a newfound sense of self, sense of community, and a great sense of pride for the fellow filmmakers with whom I had just spent the weekend.

I returned home to my life in Austin, kept writing and reading scripts, and engulfed myself in movies like any self-respecting cinephile. A few months went by, and the powers that be at Superfest contacted me and asked if I would come back to the festival as a juror for their film selection committee. I was honored for this responsibility, and I had the pleasure of viewing some of the most amazing, poignant and diverse films I had seen all year. The panel of jurors are all talented filmmakers or movers in the industry and culture. I can’t reiterate how humbling it was to be in a room with such accomplished individuals. So, I’ll be honest, I was a little nervous... okay, a lot nervous about attending the Superfest Jury weekend and giving my two cents, but I calmed my nerves (legally in some states) and hopped hobbled onto a plane. As we watched and discussed the films, I learned about the culture of disability that had been absent in my life. I asked a lot of questions, got even more answers, and at the end of this trip, I left The Bay (I’m owning it) enlightened to new points of view that couldn’t help but broaden my understanding of what it means to have a disability in this world, not just my own little one.

But something else began to creep into my mind as we watched the films, something I should’ve expected. The diversity of stories and issues, from the Far East to the East Coast was amazing, but what pressed upon me the most were the similarities we share and not just within the culture of disability. Story after story, I stopped seeing the “diversity” of it all and started seeing the broad, beautiful, flawed and redeeming spectrum of the human condition. We all have desires and fears. We all cry and laugh, and without turning too bleak -- we all face the inevitable. No matter the diversity or inclusion each film displays, they are all stories told by people about us -- Homo Sapiens. And that’s what true cinema is, right? An endless story as told by generations of artists about what it means to be alive and spinning on this big blue marble... together. As a “mainstreamer” I can only speak for myself when I say that the terminology used to describe US can get a little daunting: white, black, brown, he, she, gay, straight, transgender, disabled, handicapped, challenged, special needs. I get it -- we’re all different and we should acknowledge, respect, embrace and celebrate those differences, but we shouldn’t lose sight of what makes us all the same. What makes us excited and scared. What makes us fall in love. And what makes us strive to be better.

Alright, alright, enough of the sentimentality! What Superfest showed me that year were the results of what I strive to do as a writer -- to tell stories about the less franchised. To tell stories about a spectrum of the human condition not seen too often. And to provide a platform for artists who deserve to be seen and heard. For almost forty years (I look young though), I hoped to watch movies that showed me -- me. I wanted to experience stories that I felt a part of and could relate. Superfest provided that for me. Superfest provides that for us, for all of us: the mainstream and the not so mainstream. That’s the “Super” part about Superfest (stop rolling your eyes! You guys knew I was going to write that eventually). As the longest-running disability film festival in the world, Superfest is a beacon of pride, perseverance, and humanity to all cultures and peoples, not just those with disabilities or those within the culture.

I just booked my next trip out to San Francisco. I’ll be at the Superfest Disability Film Festival again this year as a past juror, presenter of a film at the festival, and I might even be on a Q and A panel! As I prepare to attend this year’s event, I know a little more of what to expect. I have an idea of the conversations I’ll have and overhear. I know for certain which films will be shown and I even know who gets which award for what film. But most of all, I’m hoping to be reminded that with all our beautiful and unique differences, we’re all still a part of one big great story on one big round stage (sentimentality intended).

Get your tickets to Superfest 2019 today! Click here to visit the Superfest website for tickets, show times, and to find out about the films we'll be showing.

Matthew S. Alaniz is an award-winning screen writer and script consultant living in Austin, Texas.

You can read more about his work on his website.

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10 Things You'll Find at Superfest 2019 that You Won't Anywhere Else- but Should!

Ginger Testerman — Tue, 24 Sep 2019 18:27:27 +0000

Superfest 2019 is Coming Up!

As we gear up for Superfest Disability Film Festival 2019, we wanted to share key features of the films in the festival that excite us and that are changing the way we see disability. So, in this Buzzfeed-style feature, we present 10 things you’ll find in #Superfest2019 films that you won’t get anywhere else - but should!

And don’t forget to buy your tickets to Superfest now before they sell out!

1. PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES AS MAIN CHARACTERS

Gaslit- Best of Festival Short Film

A young disabled woman fights to hold on to her identity in the face of the world’s assumptions and strives for independence from her parents, who doubt her ability to

become a mother.

2. DISABILITY FRIENDSHIPS

Stinky Chicken Dog 2

This film explores the complex and beautiful relationships between people with disabilities and their animals through an interview between a service dog owner and a companion pet owner who tell their story of a tense relationship with her formerly abused and traumatized pet Chihuahua.

3. PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES WHO ARE ALSO QUEER AND/OR PEOPLE OF COLOR

Song for Rent, After Jack Smith

Shot on 16mm film and with a loop of Kate Smith singing “God Bless America” in the background, in this adaptation of a 1969 film by Jack Smith, Barbarella Bush joins Rose Courtyard – a drag character based on Rose Kennedy - in a campy exploration of US hegemony, queer assimilation, and queer disruption.

4. DISABILITY AND DISCRIMINATION

Chuskit- Best of Festival Feature

A young girl’s dream of going to school is cut short when she becomes a paraplegic after an accident and she’s subsequently confined to life indoors in the company of her strict grandfather. As the story unfolds, our protagonist battles against the limitations imposed upon her to create the life she wants for herself.

5. INTERDEPENDENCE (AS CONTRASTED TO INDEPENDENCE)

Tis

A still, blank sheet of paper. A silhouette appears delineated beneath its surface. Here is our hero, TIS. He struggles and manages to free himself from the sheet of paper, but his feet remain attached to it. In the distance, he sees a crowd of beings similar to him. TIS tries to catch up with them but the sheet of paper he is attached to hinders his movements.

6. PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES FACING DIFFICULT REAL-LIFE SITUATIONS

The Gallery

At an audition, Maya becomes part of an absurd cycle, and loses track of who she's performing for and why. The Gallery is a narrative short that explores how some marginalized groups can be shut out of cultural institutions, and how they can feel pressured into perpetuating a system that doesn't appear to be working in their favor.

7. CHARACTERS/PEOPLE WHOSE IDENTITIES ARE NOT NECESSARILY THE MAIN DRIVING FORCE OR SOURCE OF CONFLICT FOR THE PLOT

Are You Volleyball

A story about asylum seekers displaced from war who live in limbo, hoping for a better home. They conflict with border soldiers everyday till a deaf-mute child becomes a catalyst for better communication between two groups.

8. BUT ALSO, DISABILITY AS A CENTRAL POLITICAL AND SOCIAL ISSUE

The Invalid Corps

This film brings the important and historically influential story of the Invalid Corps to the forefront: in July of 1864 the confederate army is at the gates of Washington DC and the only remaining defenders are clerks, government officials, and the Invalid Corps. A group comprised of men injured in battle or by disease, these “hopeless cripples” must hold out for a desperate 24 hours until the Union army can send reinforcements. With Lincoln himself on the ramparts, they cannot afford to fail.

9. PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES' DAY TO DAY LIVES

The Man of the Trees- Advocacy Awards

Daniel Balima is a senior horticulturist from Tenkodogo, a small Sub-Saharan African town in Burkina Faso, where he lives with his large family and has worked since he was born 67 years ago. A polio survivor who walks on his hands, he inherits his father’s business running a nursery and has given life to more than a million trees during his life.

Late Afternoon

Emily finds herself disconnected from the world around her. She drifts back through her memories to relive different moments from her life. Emily must look to her past so that she may fully connect with the present. This animated, Oscar-nominated short offers an honest glimpse into the highs and lows of life with dementia.

10. PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES AS DIRECTORS, PRODUCERS, WRITERS, AND ACTORS, TELLING THEIR OWN STORIES OR STORIES THAT ARE MEANINGFUL TO THEM PERSONALLY.

Chin Up

Throughout her childhood, JoAnne loved to draw herself as heroic characters to escape the insecurity and feeling of being different that came with her condition. However, JoAnne never drew her facial features any differently to fit the scene of a heroic warrior or mystical mermaid. This animated documentary touches on poignant milestones that have impacted JoAnne and made her the strong woman that she is today.

The Penguin Who Couldn't Swim

This animated short, made by a disabled animator, follows the story of a penguin who lives on a rocky island in the southern seas where she feels isolated from the rest of her colony.

Inclinations

Choreographed, directed and shot from disability perspectives, this dance-on-video short contrasts the playful connections when disability aesthetics, community and a ramp meet the institutional histories and discordant inclinations that can lurk just below the surface.

We look forward to seeing you at Superfest 2019: October 12th & 13th

Find out more about the films and get your tickets on the Superfest website!

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