Saturday, November 8th

An All-Around Feel GoodGrassy field near a walking trail with the words "or another way of saying it is how these images are put together"

Director: Jordan Lord | Producers: Jordan Lord & Abby Sun

This essay film asks what it means to be an audience, in the wake of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which claims but often fails to prohibit discrimination against disabled workers and audiences in the United States. Tangling common sense representations of disability, labor, and national identity, the film questions the purported goodness of putting disabled people to work in underpaid contexts ranging from captioning and transcribing to fabricating textiles for the U.S. military.

 

After…After…(Access)Hand typing at a computer. Screen showing an image of a spinal x-ray. Overlaid with the words "In learning to make a film, students are taught to show rather than tell."

Director: Jordan Lord

An essay film that confronts questions of accessibility through an attempt to record my open-heart surgery. The film follows me, as I prepare for the surgery: watching medical imaging of my body with friends, revisiting a former lover, preparing for my mom to come to New York, documenting my family’s arrival, and ultimately being admitted to the hospital. Alongside this footage, the film’s narration considers the relationship between showing and telling; various dimensions of access; and how access is frequently considered only after the threat of liability, in the context of both filmmaking and disability. The film prioritizes access as a precondition of the film itself; audio description and open captioning are inseparable aspects of the film.

 

UnholyA darkly lit scene of a Passover Seder. There is a large table with a beige table cloth and plates of food. Noa, a young adult, wears a red sweater and sits next to her father. Noa looks up at her Grandma who has a hand on her shoulder, wearing a blue sweater. Three other people at the right of the frame look over at Noa.

Director: Daisy Friedman | Producers: Arielle Friedman & Isaak Popkin

Unholy follows Noa, a young adult with a complex gastrointestinal disorder, as she attends her family’s Passover Seder for the first time since being put on a feeding tube. There, she is confronted by pushy family members, malfunctioning medical devices, and a room full of food she cannot eat.

 

Celeste Tate Harrington: Building a Legacy

The story of a street musician, born with a condition that left her limbs unusable. In 1975, Tate Harrington won a custody battle against the Philadelphia Department of Child Welfare, which sought to take away her infant daughter, claiming that she could not provide adequate care. See how Tate Harrington’s fight to be a mother and earn an independent living was a revolutionary act.

 

Audio DescriptionA man with tan skin, black hair combed up, glasses, and gray shirt looks over at someone. He also has headphones with a mic around his neck and is in a cubicle office environment.

Director: Luke J. Salewski | Producer: Lee Pugsley

After making a wish on his birthday, a lonely visually impaired man finds his world turned upside down by an unexpected encounter.

 

 

Voice Notes From PalestineA black slide with the title ‘Voice notes from Palestine.” Underneath are the words in Arabic.

Director: Amal Al-Groobi | Producer: Dr. Iain Overton, Dr. Nazmi Al-Masri, Dr. Itab Shuayb

Voice Notes from Palestine, a short film by filmmaker Amal Al-Agroobi and Action on Armed Violence (AOAV), features the testimonies of several Palestinian students with disabilities from the Islamic University of Gaza. The students recount their experiences in occupied Gaza under siege and bombardment by the Israeli military.

The students had taken part in an online-course in 2023 run by Dr Iain Overton, Director of AOAV. The course aimed to teach story-telling techniques via social media.

Aya Kafafi, who took part in the course, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in July 2024, along with her father, sister, and several of her nieces and nephews.

 

Daniel K. Inouye: Life of ServiceA political collage background with Daniel pasted onto the front.

Explore the story of the U.S. Senator for Hawai’i who was injured in battle during World War II, resulting in the amputation of his right arm. Posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his lifelong public service, Inouye championed the cause of justice and equality for all Americans, including people living with disabilities.

 

Les MonstresThree people sit in an accessible van with the grates of a folded ramp behind them. The driver is a woman with a sweater and a zebra steering wheel. In the passenger seat is a bored teenager with glasses and a blue hoodie. Behind them is a kid in a wheelchair.

Director: Pablo Leridon | Producer: Eliott Khayat

Today, visually impaired teenager Erwan can’t wait to get to school to declare his love for Agathe. Unfortunately, he first has to share a medical transport van with David, a wheelchair-bound suck-up, who tries everyday to make friends with Erwan, quite unsuccesfully. When David tries to make sure they never arrive, war is declared.

 

A space themed backdrop with a cutout photo of Judy-Lynn collaged on top. She is wearing a red dress, black pumps, sunglasses, and is holding a book and purse.Judy-Lynn del Ray: the Galaxy Gal

The story of a woman with dwarfism who revolutionized the world of science fiction by editing and publishing books from sci-fi writers such as Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick and George Lucas’ “Star Wars” in novel form. See how science fiction narratives, through their speculative and imaginative nature, offer a more inclusive and equitable lens through which to redefine disability.

 

Access the Unknown Dr. Mona Minkara has full scuba gear on with goggles over her face. She stands next to her Filipino scuba instructor Arnel. The background is the ocean and a blue sky.

Director: Mona Minkara & Benjamin Jimenez | Producer: Mona Minkara

Just because it’s challenging doesn’t mean blind people should be excluded from the beauty of the ocean. In this documentary short, Dr. Mona Minkara, a blind traveler and adventurer, takes on the challenge of scuba diving, proving that with adaptation, trust, and a willingness to access the unknown, the beauty of the world can be experienced in more ways than one.

 

Argentinian men with dwarfism all have dark gray uniforms on. Their limbs are blurred as they are clearly running on a sidewalk, with trees in the background. Feature film: El Mundialito (Small World Cup)

Director: Marcel Czombos | Producer: Lara Decuzzi

Achondroplasia is a bone growth disorder that causes the most common type of dwarfism. Facundo (Argentina), Julio (Paraguay), Vinicius (Brazil) and Fabián (Peru) are the captains of the “short” soccer teams of their countries. We see them battle ableism and compete for the prestigious Mundialito Cup.

 

 

Sunday, November 9th:

The image is of the back of a woman in a wheelchair who wears a floral red blouse. She faces a large yellow building with statues at the entrance. Feature film: Disposable Humanity

Director: Cameron S. Mitchell | Producer: Cameron S. Mitchell & David T. Mitchell

A family’s investigation into the history and memory of the Nazi Aktion T4 program which targeted over 300,000 disabled people and catalyzed the Holocaust.

 

Equal WorldThe poster for the film ‘Equal World?’ with the text “Not a question. A right.” Two young women in wheelchairs are in the center of a large paved area with a domed Pakistani gazebo in the background and lush green trees.

Director: Tom Jenkinson | Producer: Dela Anderson

‘Equal World?’ – Not a question. A right.

The film follows disability advocate Abia Akram as she platforms the voices of three young people with disabilities: Tapiwa, Taqwa and Basiru. It shows their daily lives and talks to what is needed to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and an inclusive society. These intimate portraits of young campaigners allow the audience invaluable insight into why youths with disabilities are essential partners in getting the SDGs back on track.

 

Brad Lomax: Creating Communities of CareArtwork of Brad Lomax, a Black man in a wheelchair, holding a microphone to make a speech. The streets of Oakland, CA are in the background.

The story of a Black Panther Party member and founder of the East Oakland Center for Independent Living, who had multiple sclerosis and used a wheelchair. Explore Brad Lomax’s under-reported contributions to the early disability justice movement, which laid the groundwork for the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act.

 

Rising Tides, Raising VoicesA tilted camera angle depicting a house and palm trees being swept up by the blue ocean. The title ‘Rising Tides and Raising Voices’ is in the middle.

Director: Jody Kristina Santos | Producer: Faaolo Utumapu-Utailesolo

The Pacific region is among the most impacted in the world by climate change. As part of a legacy of systemic oppression, Indigenous Pacific Islanders with disabilities are particularly at risk. Because they are less likely to be formally employed, their livelihoods depend on fishing and farming – which have been significantly affected by climate change. During disasters, the structural barriers that Pacific Islanders with disabilities face every day – like the lack of accessible information and transportation – can become a death sentence. Faced with the urgency of increasing disasters, disabled grassroots activists across the Pacific are championing disability-inclusive climate action. It’s a fight not just against nature, but against a world that often overlooks people with disabilities. Rising Tides, Raising Voices is a call for intersectional, inclusive, community-led solutions to the encroaching global crisis.

 

KissesA black and white image of a young woman in a wheelchair with her hair pulled back in a curly ponytail in a sleeveless black dress. She sits at a restaurant table looking at the young man opposite her with a loose T-Shirt. There are flowers on the table and the background is blinds.

Director: Ziwei Li | Producer: Qing Li

Mia, a young woman who uses a wheelchair and lives with her conservative father, is curious about love. When James, a young man with secrets, unexpectedly enters her life, she embarks on a bold journey of intimacy and self-discovery. However, an unexpected twist forces them to confront everything they thought they knew about themselves and each other.

 

Kitty O’Neil: The Fastest Woman in the WorldA colorful collage background made up of newspaper snippets. A cut-out photo of Kitty in a yellow and red race car is front and center.

Kitty O’Neil (1946-2018) was a racecar driver, stunt legend, and daredevil. Known as “the fastest woman in the world,” O’Neil broke the land speed record in 1976, clocking an average of over 512 mph in a three-wheeled rocket car across Oregon’s Alvord Desert.

 

A woman with a beige beret, sweater, and coat looks worriedly at a piece of paper that she holds. Behind her are the walls of a home.

The Letter

Director: Samuel Dore | Producer: Justin Edgar

As the Nazi’s rise to power in pre WW2 Germany, a young German man named Johan decides to marry his sweetheart Ingrid. Johan’s father Karl is a member of the Nazi party and Johan fears that his father will not allow them to be married because he doesn’t want Johan to marry a Deaf girl, so keeps this a secret from him. The persecution of the Deaf community escalates and Lina’s father runs a Deaf club which becomes a target to be brought under Nazi control. When Karl finds out about their romance, Johan is forced to make a choice between his father’s will and his heart.

 

ContoursTwo hands that are brown have their fingers gently intwined, but not fully grasping each other. One hand has rings on.

Director: Aisha Amin | Producer: Brian Cohen

Upon using a modern art museum as the setting for a role play game that goes hopelessly awry, a deaf couple desperate to rekindle their spark finds the reconnection they seek in their shared experience over an abstract sculpture.

 

RememberAn Iranian man with a gray beard and hair sits crouched in a field of grass. He has a black sweater on with the sleeves rolled up and brown pants. He sits in front of a small basin of water, staring at it.

Director/Producer: Javad Ganji

An atmospheric glimpse into a man with Alzheimer’s who lives in a rural area, and seeks to find someone to help him remember his prayers.

 

 

 

Against a black background there are two faces lying flat, the crowns of their heads touching. The face on the left is Ananias, a Mexican man who stares solemnly up. The face on the right is a mask with white hair, red lips, and two teeth. Viejito/Enfermito/Grito (Old Man/Sick Man/Shout)

Director/Producer: Dolissa Medina

Ananias, an SF Bay Area artist and immigrant, performs the folkloric Danza de los Viejitos (the Dance of the Old Men). Originally from Michoacán, Mexico, where the dance originates, Ananias interprets its movements through the lens of his spirituality, his long-term HIV-related disabilities, and his search for a place in the world.

 

Thomas Wiggins: Composing the FutureA black and white theater and grand piano are the backdrop to a photo of Thomas Wiggins in a blue suit, sitting by the piano.

An African American composer and pianist known as one of the greatest musicians of the 19th century, Thomas Wiggins (1849-1908) was blind from birth and likely autistic. Although born into slavery, Wiggins was the first African American to perform at the White House, and toured throughout the U.S., South America, and Europe.

 

Words to Live ByA Mexican woman wears a yellow sweater and is in the middle of signing, with her hands up to her chest. She stares off to the side at someone next to her off camera. Behind her is a white wall, and in front of her is a table with a red solo cup and a phone.

Director/Producer: Richard E. Haywood | Producer: Jennifer Gonzalez

A sign language interpreter tries to heal from childhood trauma through expanding idiomatic expression and minority representation in the deaf community.

 

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