Paul K. Longmore Institute on Disability - Disability film

Journey with Us to Normal and Back Again at Superfest!

Emily Beitiks — Wed, 26 Sep 2018 15:49:31 +0000

By: Cathy Kudlick

What does it mean to be “normal”? Is it the same as being “cured” of one’s disability? And if the chance comes, do you jump at it, or do you turn away, sensing that it may not ultimately be worth it?

Two of this year’s Superfest selections explore questions such as these by taking viewers along on voyages of self-discovery. The results are thought-provoking meditations on who we are and what makes us that way, especially when we realize nothing is as simple as it at first seems.

In “Journey to the Miracle Man” (Documentary, 2018), Swedish filmmakers Lisa Viola and Fabian Wigren document their shared literal and spiritual journey that ultimately leads them in different directions. The feature-length documentary follows the two friends living with chronic disabilities as they travel from Sweden to Brazil to be treated by John of God, whose unusual (and sometimes creepy) interventions attract cure-seekers from around the world. Though Fabian and Lisa struggle with the commercial extravaganza built up around the man and the people who flock to him, they each are forced to confront what cure means for them and for their understanding of their disabilities.

“This is Normal” (Narrative Short, 2014) also grapples with cure in unexpected ways. Gwen, a young deaf woman who has grown up with limited fluency in ASL because of being mainstreamed in a hearing family, discovers that she’s a candidate for “cochlear implant regeneration,” a procedure that promises to restore her hearing. This fictional short introduces us to a pushy mother and a sympathetic, clueless sister pulling in one direction and a group of Deaf friends pulling her in another. As someone who doesn’t fit inside either the Deaf or the hearing world, Gwen struggles to understand the possible impact of an imperfect technology. Who is she, and where does she stand the best chance of finding community? Like Lisa and Fabian, she ponders where disability and normalcy intersect and collide.

Together, “Journey to the Miracle Man” and “This is Normal” question the role of medicine, hope, and discovery, along with what someone is expected or willing to do when it comes to curing disability. Seeing these films in the context of a community-based festival like Superfest will leave you with a rare sense of confusion and felling empowered. After all, where else are our complex feelings around cure so respectfully addressed in a room surrounded by others grappling just like you?

Tags:

Cathy Kudlick

Journey to the Miracle Man

This is Normal

Disability film

Normalcy Superfest Disability Film Festival

How to Catch the Films from Superfest 2017!

Visitor — Tue, 12 Dec 2017 22:13:02 +0000

The Longmore Institute on Disability and LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired are still so excited about the success of Superfest 2017! Although this year's festival has come to an end, this post will let you know how you can still watch or learn more about some of your favorite characters, films, and directors! And don't miss the chance to catch six of these films with audio description and captioning twice a day throughout December 2017 and January 2018 on SFGOVTV2 either on your tv or streaming to your computer. Click here for the schedule or here to watch now.

Info for films that screened on Saturday, November 4^th Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, Berkeley:

CHIEF This reverent ode to the service dog tells the story of German immigrant Sonja Ohldag, who is diagnosed with a seizure disorder after moving to the U.S. in 1999. Unable to afford a service animal from an organization, Sonja trains her dogs herself and takes a chance on Chief, who is not your average service dog. Keep up with @chief - a service dog on Facebook.

MIND/GAME: The UNQUIET JOURNEY OF CHAMIQUE HOLDSCLAW Basketball superstar Chamique Holdsclaw faced six felony counts, the possibility of prison and public attacks on her character. Her rollercoaster attempts at recovery from near suicide reveal an uphill battle against the stigma of psychiatric disability and show a deep journey that is powerful, revelatory, instructive and real. Learn more about Mind/Game on Twitter! @mindgamefilm Buy your home use DVD here.

WHEN BRENDEN MET HIROE A photographer from Australia returns to Japan to reunite with his friend Hiroe, who he met at a blind and deaf/blind workshop the year before. The pair spends an unforgettable day together. Learn more about this film and director on Twitter! @crossroadarts Watch the film here (Audio described but not captioned).

THE BARBER OF AUGUSTA Toronto native Matthew Genser goes to great lengths to find his unexpected superpower: cutting hair. Like all superheroes, he has a dark side; but in his costume, he’s invincible. Put on your cape and get lined up! Follow and learn more about the Director of this short film on Twitter! @michelehozer Check out the film website.

TRAVELLER A young woman born with a disability searches for a career despite rampant discrimination. She travels to Japan where she finds strength in disability activism and community, and returns home with a newfound sense of pride. Follow and keep up with the director on Twitter: @nwayezarchesoe

ON THE OUTS: REENTRY FOR INMATES WITH DISABILITIES “On the Outs” follows three inmates with disabilities as they prepare for reentry, get discharged and navigate the challenges of returning to their old lives. Produced by the Amplifying Voices of Inmates with Disabilities (AVID) Prison Project, this documentary scrutinizes the prison institution and its treatment of inmates with disabilities. This film can be rented or purchased from: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/ontheoutsa There is also a link to a non-AD non-Opencaps version at: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/ontheouts Follow on twitter: @avidproject Learn more about Rooted in Rights and see other films on their website here.

SIGN Two men meet on a train—and a tender and unspoken love story unfolds. Through vignettes, music and sign language, “Sign” follows the relationship between Ben (hearing) and Aaron (Deaf) as they navigate life’s milestones side by side. Follow and learn more about this film on Twitter: @signthefilm

IN CRYSTAL SKIN In Bogotá, Colombia, a charismatic eleven-year-old named Maria lives with the limitations imposed by a rare skin disease. Her fierce bond with her mother is tested and strengthened as they struggle to preserve Maria’s swiftly passing childhood. For more information on this film follow @incrystalskin on Twitter, as well as stream through Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/216918967 (No AD)

STAB: LIFE AS A VOODOO DOLL An animated comic medical memoir dedicated to all those who live with chronic illness or disability. Writer and director Jeanette Castillo pairs her tongue-and-cheek personal account of living with Type 1 diabetes with criticism of the American healthcare system. Keep up and learn more about this film by following its Facebook page.

Info for films that screened on Sunday, November 5^th at The Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco:

DEEJ After being abandoned by his birth parents, DJ found not only a loving family but a life in words through a text-to-voice synthesizer. Told by DJ himself, “Deej” was filmed over six years in the American Midwest and chronicles his journey to become Oberlin’s first non-speaking, autistic student. Info on how to catch this film at www.DeejMovie.com or order your DVD at https://www.deejmovie.com/store. Deej will also be broadcast by America ReFramed throughout the week following Tuesday, December 26. Follow and learn more about this film through twitter! @deejmovie

ON BEAT This documentary short follows the lives of a deaf couple with hearing children and the unexpected outlet that brings their family closer together. Purchase and stream all of Reid Davenport’s films at: http://throughmylens.us/reids-films/. Follow and learn more about this film's director on twitter! @ReidDavenport

LEFTY & LOOSEY In this techy ode to film noir, two amputee veterans turned private investigators uncover a diabolical plot and must overcome their fears to crack the code and save the world. Follow and learn more about this film and the director/actor/writer on Twitter! @david_harrell Watch it here (non-AD).

RHIZOPHORA Forty years after the Vietnam War, the toxic remnants of Agent Orange have not faded. In this dreamlike meditation on the impact of war and the resilience of humanity, "Rhizophora" follows 11 disabled Vietnamese youth on a whimsical, poignant and whirling journey through a day in their lives. Follow and learn more about this film on Facebook! @rhizophoramovie Visit the website.

WELL DONE A sharply-dressed young man with Down syndrome sneaks out of his house to visit an art museum and causes a disruption. Through humor and irreverence, this film reminds us that art can be interpreted by everyone, not just the "experts." Keep up and learn more about Well Done on Facebook.

Tags:

Disability film

LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired

Superfest

Why the Dissies?

Visitor — Tue, 09 Jul 2013 17:08:46 +0000

By: Catherine Kudlick

Earlier this year the Longmore Institute took over running Superfest International Disability Film Festival along with the San Francisco Lighthouse for the Blind. Occasionally we’ll blog about our behind-the-scenes thinking and plans, our debates, our challenges in taking over this venerable Bay Area disability cultural institution, the world’s longest-running disability film festival.

In the spirit of the celebrated Hollywood send-up, “The Razzies,” we will host our first event, “The Dissies,” on Saturday, October 12. Temporarily departing from the traditional film festival format, this one-night retrospective will gather together the formidable Bay Area disability community for an unflinching, entertaining look at the worst of the worst clips in US film representations of disability. With that renewed sense of pride that comes from bonding over reclaiming an uncomfortable past, we can return to the true work of Superfest next year to celebrate disability films that showcase our community’s ingenuity and creativity.

But for now, as we fundraise and begin to put our submission and judging processes in place, we wanted to try something unprecedented in the disability community: take the sting out of the negativity disabled people face by unpacking it together among friends. After all, it’s one thing to attend mainstream screenings or watch them at home alone, and quite another to arrive knowing that we’re among fellow-travelers whose primary aim is to shatter these images and to have some fun. Think of it like emotional judo, where a combatant temporarily works with the opponent’s force in order to triumph; you’ve got to understand that force in all its complexity to own it and make it work for you.

Besides, when we go to the movies, how often do we see disability up there on the big screen and get to laugh at outrageous portrayals and comment on them? As an imperfectly blind moviegoer myself, I am there, making conscious and subconscious comparisons with the actors and their situations: do they remind me of anyone I know and love? Do they suggest anything about me, the person I hope to be or the one I secretly dread? And how do I feel about my fellow audience members as I watch these projections: have I dissolved into being an anonymous member of a crowd or am I hiding alone among the many?

All movie-going puts people in that unnamed space between being an individual viewer and part of a whole. But when are we invited to experience this and act on it in a big room where others have shared many of the same emotions related to disability? How often do we get to indulge in acts of collective indignation at tired-old stereotypes and clichés, cloying exaggerations, cheap shots at disabled people and disability by gasping, hooting, laughing, raising collective fist and finger (or whatever real or imagined body part) into the air to say “enough already!”

Whether films take us somewhere far away outside or deep down inside, they involve an intimate dance between projection and reflection, a giant flickering mirror, not just back to us, but to the society and culture we live in. They shape how we see ourselves individually and collectively, how others see us, and how we see others. This is why movies matter, why they occupy a key intersection where entertainment, psychology, and social justice meet.

And it’s why it matters when those of us with disabilities see someone with a disability up there on the screen. For me as someone who grew up shaped by taunting and isolation, the pathetic portrayals of blind characters played by clueless sighted ones reinforced my worst fears of being an ugly, unloveable person who held things close to my face and who too often mis-reached or bumped into things and missed sighted cues, only to discover I had been the butt of a cruel joke. It didn’t help that I only came upon humiliating caricatures of someone like me, still too common, such as the recent one trotted out in the trailer for a fake Will Smith movie, Blind Ref? And what about all the movies about other disabilities, slavishly remaining true to stereotypes that careen between menace and being pathetic? (I won’t suggest any here, since I don’t want to influence the nominations and voting!) But for a compilation of twentieth-century movies made in the US and a schema for thinking about them, see Martin Norden’s Cinema Of Isolation: A History of Physical Disability in the Movies (Rutgers, 1994).

So let us come together – people with disabilities, our friends, our allies, and anyone curious enough to wonder what the fuss is all about - to hijack this dreariness by having it on our terms rather than ones dictated to us by outdated scripts. As individual viewers, most of us lack the power to dethrone the seemingly unassailable images, leaving us to feel empty and isolated, and even unsure if we’re right to challenge an industry that is so entrenched and well-financed. Sitting in a large room together with popcorn, we discover that we have never been alone when we squirm - it’s just that we never knew there could be people who thought like us right there in the audience despite what we saw up on the screen. Thanks to the Bay Area’s rowdy, savvy, audacious, smart audience of people with disabilities, we can begin to question a tired past from a place of power in a spirit of camaraderie and fun.

The process of owning the past involves actually looking at it from time to time, to see where we’ve been and celebrate the progress we’ve achieved as a movement. Combined with growing numbers of more nuanced portrayals that Superfest will showcase in the future, events such as the Dissies can help a generation of current and future filmmakers and filmgoers change expectations. For this important evening together, everyone will be experts charged with exposing and denouncing the old stereotypes for what they are. By collectively unpacking the negatives that mainstream society has forced in front of us, people with disabilities and our allies can insist on images that reflect and project the more fascinating realities we know to be true. And basking in these new reflections, we can constructively move forward with better ideas of who we are to others and to ourselves.

Tags:

people with disabilities