GENE SISKEL FILM CENTER

New Channels of Access

Expired March 1, 2021 5:59 AM
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Open captions  / Two films from this program include audio descriptions


New Channels of Access gathers together short videos by Carolyn Lazard, Leroy Moore Jr., Sharon Snyder, David Mitchell, Liza Sylvestre, Joseph Grigely, Christine Sun Kim, and Thomas Mader to explore the last three decades of creative struggles and expressions within disability culture and politics. Through a variety of means and perspectives, these works expand and complicate systems of communication, particularly in regard to film and video, while examining the practices (and systemic failings) of accessibility and accommodations. This program is organized in the spirit of Mitchell and Snyder’s insistence that disability subjectivities “are not just characterized by socially imposed restrictions, but productively create new forms of embodied knowledge and collective consciousness.”


Presented as part of This Set of Actions is a Mirror, multipart look at expressions of disability culture and politics in artists’ moving images.


Related programs:


Compensation

Zeinabu irene Davis, 1999, USA, 95 minutes, ASL and open captions

Streaming February 25–March 3


Panel discussion with Dustin Gibson, Robert McRuer, Liza Sylvestre, and Minh Nguyen

Thursday, February 25, 7:00 p.m. CT

This event will have live captions and ASL interpretation.

“In order for us to have equal rights, we don’t have to change…it's the environment that needs to change,” asserts scholar and disability activist Harlan Hahn in Sharon Snyder and David Mitchell’s pioneering document of disability culture in the mid-1990s. “All we want to do,” Hahn laughs, “is change the world.” Featuring footage of the groundbreaking activism that led to the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990, including the Capitol Steps Crawl, as well as appearances by such influential artists as Cheryl Marie Wade and Anne Finger, Vital Signs provides frank, raw, and often humorous perspectives of the times.


[Image: A white woman, the poet, performer and disability rights activist Cheryl Marie Wade, is shown from the waist up. She has wispy dark hair and a black, long-sleeved top. She is in front of a light colored window that is broken up into six different panes. Her mouth is making a shape like she is talking, her gaze is focused on someone to the left of the camera and her right hand is curled and held near her chest. At the bottom of the screen are yellow captions with black borders around them that read “There’s a politic to your disability.”]

  • Year
    1995
  • Runtime
    18 minute excerpt of 48 minutes
  • Language
    English
  • Country
    United States
  • Director
    Sharon Snyder, David Mitchell