Support Superfest Disability Film Festival this #GivingTuesday, an international day of philanthropy in response to Black Friday and Cyber Monday!
Superfest, the longest-running disability film festival in the world, shakes things up by replacing pity and melodrama with edgy, thought-provoking, rich portrayals of people with disabilities. This year we need your support more than ever as we assume full leadership of Superfest. After building a strong foundation for the festival over a successful six-year partnership with the LightHouse for the Blind, we’re ready to explore new forms of access, new conversations, and most of all, to find new ways to engage our community. You can read more about Superfest on our website.
If you believe in Superfest as a platform for disabled filmmakers, actors, creators and rebels to share their stories with the world, we need your support!
Here are the Top 5 Reasons to Donate to the Longmore Institute this Giving Tuesday:
1) Your donations will go directly to funding programs like Superfest (and not pay core staff salaries or rental space thanks to San Francisco State’s generous support) so your donation goes straight towards the stuff you care most about.
Superfest makes the marquee at the Freight & Salvage!
2) Without organizations like the Longmore Institute, which works to revolutionize social views of disability and make change at the cultural level, we will remain in the place we are now: where even basic needs for people with disabilities are not being met.
The Longmore Institute regularly hosts school assemblies like this one at SF Children's Day School to promote better understanding of people with disabilities among K-12 youth.
3) Because: joy. We counter the often-negative stereotypes of disability by incorporating laughter, whimsy and creativity into our work whenever possible. Our programs, like Superfest, are celebratory and positive events which create a sense of rejuvenation in a world that can make us feel anything but that. Giving should feel good (the days of the guilt-inducing pity-based telethons are OVER thankfully), and what doesn’t feel good about supporting an organization with this kind of dedication!
Happy viewers at Superfest Disability Film Festival
4) We are cultivating the next leaders of the disability rights movement. With seven Longmore Student Fellows currently at the Institute, over 35 past fellows, dozens of dedicated volunteers, and events such as Superfest Showcases at school assemblies that have introduced hundreds of younger people to disability history, community, and culture: we are actively inspiring and educating a new generation of social change makers.
A Longmore Fellow shows why disability scholarship is important to her.
5) Supporting the Longmore Institute promotes greater intersectionality: we seek to include all aspects of disabled people’s lives, understanding that intersecting identities are an often-unaddressed part of the disability experience. Take Superfest for example. We regularly feature films that have been rejected by other disability film festivals on the grounds of being “too edgy,” while at Superfest, we’re always on the lookout for films that break out from the traditional disability story!
Dani from "Who am I to Stop it," a documentary on isolation, art and transformation after brain injury. It is not designed to be inspirational simply because it features a traumatic brain injury survivor. Instead, the film looks at very difficult questions around loneliness, stigma, poverty, and how Dani finds her way in the world again as a disabled, lesbian, woman of color.
Mia Gimp from "Krutch," a steamy, experimental short film exploring perception, sexuality, disability, and gender on the streets and sheets of New York City.
Whether reaching folks new to disability or supporting long-time disability pros, your support makes it possible to change hearts and minds by promoting a vital, creative, complex disability culture.
Please join me by making a gift on Giving Tuesday, click this link to donate to the Longmore Institute!
You can make your show support go even further by sharing your own #UnSelfie on social media. Read the five easy steps to making your own UnSelfie here!
A selection of Longmore Fellows, Council Members, and supporters showing why the Longmore Institute's work is important to them through their #UnSelfies