Courtesy of Academy Museum of Motion Pictures
The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures will launch its “Disability, Representation & Film” program on July 13 to commemorate the Americans with Disabilities Act, which became law in July 1990.
Hosted by Academy Museum Director of Education and Programs Christiana Ibarra, the day-long event will feature workshops, museum tours, panel discussions, film screenings and live dance performances and is expected to raise awareness about disability and representation in film.
“Becoming disabled can happen to anyone at any time, and if you look at the statistics, one in four people in this country is disabled, so it’s a big demographic that doesn’t get a lot of attention,” Ibarra said. “We don’t see a lot of disabled people on screen, so I think it’s our duty as a film museum to share those stories.”
Sound designer, producer and Academy member Jim LeBrecht and prominent activist Lawrence Carter Long approached Ibarra about a disability-centered program, and what began as an idea for a screening and a few workshops quickly grew into a full-day event.
Ibarra stressed that when film is used as a tool for education and social change, it fosters “more empathy” and “more compassion” for marginalized groups. He hopes the program will inspire participants to “learn more about what people are going through” and become a “push forward” to make Hollywood a more inclusive industry.
As part of the program, the Academy Museum will host three adaptive tours: a guided tactile experience in the Netflix Lounge at 10:30 a.m., allowing visitors to touch and explore film props; a visually interpreted tour of highlights from the “Stories of Cinema” exhibit on the second floor at noon; and an American Sign Language tour of “Stories of Cinema” on the third floor at 1 p.m.
Two workshops, on creating visual representations for film and tactile filmmaking, will be held at 11 a.m. Infinite Flow, a Los Angeles-based professional dance company of able-bodied and disabled dancers, will perform in the Sidney Poitier Grand Lobby at 3:40 p.m.
A curated selection of disability-themed short films will be screened at the David Geffen Theater beginning at 2 p.m. Following the screenings, journalist Kristen Lopez will moderate a talk with Lebrecht, Carter Long, animator and writer Jorge R. Gutierrez, Easterseals Disability Film Competition founder and director Nick Nowicki, and visual effects supervisor Caitlin Yang about the achievements and history of filmmakers with disabilities.
The program will conclude with a screening of “Crip Camp” at 6:30 p.m., followed by a Q&A with director Nicole Newnham and LeBrecht, who did the film’s sound. Lopez will moderate the Q&A.
Tickets and the full schedule for the Disability, Representation and Film program are available on the Academy Museum website.