ReelPeople, ReelAbilities – NYU Film Competition

WINNER AND FINALISTS

The ReelPeople, ReelAbilities Film Competition is an initiative by New York University’s Program Board Film Committee in collaboration with the ReelAbilities Film Festival: New York and co-sponsored by NYU’s Center for Disability Studies. It is a film competition open to current NYU students and NYU graduates from the Class of 2019 for short films (7-15 minutes) made by, for, and about people with disabilities.

Please enjoy the works from the four finalists of the competition. These films were judged by esteemed NYU professors Alice Elliott and Faye Ginsburg, as well as Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Jason DaSilva. 

WINNER—Finalist #1: Murder She Read

Click here to watch Murder She Read
Click here to watch Murder She Read with audio description

Artist Bio: Sarah Lee Greenbaum (b. Stony Brook, NY, 1990) is a filmmaker based in Brooklyn, New York. Originally trained in classical painting, Greenbaum shifted to film in 2016 after a residency in Queens inspired a more urgent need to connect directly with an audience. Greenbaum’s independent films are influenced in part by her training in classical painting, particularly in their attention to detail, light and stillness. She is currently enrolled at NYU Tisch School of the Arts as a cinematography major. In her time before and after NYU, Greenbaum has worked on numerous film productions both nationally and internationally (1st AC and DP). Her short film Murder She Read was a documentary finalist in the Fusion Film Festival. 

Artist Statement: Murder She Read is the story of one young woman’s experience of both acute and chronic illness and her assumption of a disabled identity. The film focuses on how healing, identity and self discovery often exist in a space of mystery.

Judges’ Commentary:

  • Faye: I found this short experimental documentary incredibly engaging, as the protagonist, a woman in her 30s?, tells us her somewhat mysterious journey of having a sudden neurologic event that approximated dementia — nothing made sense for a long period of time — and how watching shows like Home Improvement and eventually (oddly enough) Murder She Wrote helped her start to gain some of her brain capacity back. The director uses film language effectively to help communicate what her condition feels like. Angela Lansbury’s character, Jessica Fletcher, being able to piece together murder mysteries and explain them in granular detail becomes both a material guide and metaphor for Lizzy’s steps toward recovering some of her function, but also becomes an unlikely icon for the new identification with disability that Lizzy articulates. I found it quite compelling on a rarely discussed topic (undiagnosed neurological events that lead to chronic conditions) and loved the quirkiness as well as depth of the story line.
  • Jason: This film had a clear story structure with a problem that needed to be confronted by the end of the film. The main character was likeable and outlined her challenges and, by the end of the film, the viewer watched her unravel them and found a way to identify herself once again through Murder She Wrote, which had a formulaic structure that supported her disability. Well done – good filmmaking and craftsmanship.
  • Alice: The metaphor of Jessica Fletcher and “Murder She Wrote” is both original and expansive. The documentary opens a window into the world of TAPs (Temporarily Able People) and what it is like to lose that privileged status. It shows us the process of slowing down and the patience it requires from oneself. The sound levels could use another polish.

RUNNER-UP—Finalist #2: The Deep End

Click here to watch The Deep End
Click here to watch The Deep End with audio description

Artist Bio: Emma Grace Wright is a storyteller with a unique perspective and passion for telling stories about those who are marginalized, especially people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Her passion stems from being the sister to 2 younger siblings with Down syndrome and an older sister with autism. Her proven ability to produce, direct, shoot and edit short documentaries has landed her work on CNN, Time, Today Show, GMA and BBC. In 2017, she founded and hosted the Valorem Film Festival, which helped ignite a national conversation about the under-representation of people with disabilities in film. Emma Grace is a featured writer for Maria Shriver’s Architects of Change, and Director of Media for the internationally recognized coffee shop, Bitty & Beau’s Coffee. At 19, she is making her directorial debut with her first narrative short film, “The Deep End”. Wright is a member of the Film & TV department in the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University.

Artist Statement: Beau is the reason I first picked up a camera, and the reason I’ve dedicated my life to telling stories like this. Beau deserves and desires the same things everyone else in the world wants — love and acceptance. Sadly, most of the world struggles with making room for someone that is different. My hope is that my projects will help others see the beauty I see in Beau and others with disabilities. This is a deeply personal project, and I hope I can inspire audiences to think differently about the way we treat each other. This film is for Beau; this film is for you.

Judges’ Commentary:

  • Faye: Lovely short film focusing on a young adolescent boy, Beau, with Down Syndrome, who is invited to and attends a pool party in the white suburb where he lives. We see dynamics of the typical kids trying to include him at the pool, but also how difficult it is for Beau to exactly fit in; the end offers a lovely twist where one of the boys returns to play with him. The film manages to communicate a sense of his world and its complexity, and render the supportive mother quite well.  The home footage and text at the end reveals that the director is his older sister who “has his back.” Very sensitively done, and Beau does a great job performing as himself.; he has a remarkably strong screen presence The fact that Beau barely talks in the film allows the audience to imagine that he is feeling a sense of his longing to be part of things. The negatives: It’s not particularly original, innovative or experimental.I found the music distracting and cliched.
  • Jason: This was a very heartfelt story. It was well shot and got the feeling of isolation, as well as the feeling of inclusion, across to the viewer. It left me wanting to know more about the process of working with a family member with a disability and how the director included the subject in the making of the story.
  • Alice: One of the things I liked in this simple short was the celebration of the ordinary. It’s just an ordinary get together with other kids at a pool party. The invitation to a class member with Downs syndrome seems typical of this group. The “non” event would be startling in another group, but Beau is part of the group and his attendance is something they expect and accept. This normalizes the “other”. The ending seems a little pat and I had to wonder why the other boy didn’t invite Beau to come to the baseball field with him.

 

Finalist #3: Dysthymia

Click here to watch Dysthymia 

Artist Bio: Kody Christiansen, the lead actor, co-director, and producer, most recently lived in Hollywood, California before moving to NYC. He is graduating this May from the NYU School of Professional Studies Associates program with a degree in Liberal Arts and looks forward to pursuing his bachelors degree in Fine Arts this fall.
Alyazia Alremeithi, the co-director, co-writer, and producer, is from the Emirates and double majoring in Interactive Media and Visual Arts at NYU Abu Dhabi.
Hanzalla Unman, crew member and producer, hails from Pakistan and majoring in Computer Science at NYU Abu Dhabi.
Shaheer, crew member, lead editor, and producer, is from Pakistan and is majoring in Mechanical Engineering at NYU Abu Dhabi.

Artist Statement: Four NYU students from different countries and different NYU schools came together in London for a J-term class – Immersive Storytelling VR – and created a powerful piece of immersive and interactive film which gives viewers a new perspective on depression. The film allows the participants to experience in 360 degrees what a morning of someone who is dealing with depression might encounter as they try to get out of the house.
The 360 experience allows the watcher to become the main character and make decisions which lead to different results. Much like in real life, these decisions can impact the outcome of the story and through immersion one feels more connected to the subject matter in a completely different way than classic 2-D films. The newfound empathy this immersive and interactive 360 film produces for its viewers is both educational and inspirational. 

Judges’ Commentary:

  • Faye: I appreciate the idea of using the VR format to try and get across the feeling of bleak isolation and despair that chronic depression produces, and a set of choices that offers the viewer an opportunity to engage with the kind of decision making that is faced by people who struggle with dysthmia. I don’t think it was excecuted in a particularly compelling way nor did it take advantage of the VR format very effectively, alas
  • Jason: The experimental form of using interactive elements was compelling, but it didn’t carry the story as far as it could. It didn’t show me details of what showing the disorder out in the world could be like, but all in all I thought it got its point across.
  • Alice: This piece seems particularly timely with most of us confined to our homes and with reduced agency. The weight of the depression was extremely intense and unbearably heavy. It was a creative choice to use VR in this way. Wish I had context that this was a VR piece. I find myself questioning the two choices we were given. Would call a friend, try my therapist or take my meds have offered other possibilities? A technical question in the choice to go out, by screen might have frozen. Was there movement?

Finalist #4: Our Synesthesia, Our Subway

Click here to watch Our Synesthesia, Our Subway

Artist Bio: Sabeena N Singhani (she/her) is a video journalist and multimedia artist. She often works with non-narrative video and glitch art to examine overlooked processes and to explore the self in relation to others. Her work with glitch is iterative and algorithmic, mimicking the ways in which we flow through everyday processes. Sabeena has worked with VICE Media, CBS News, the Associated Press, Eyebeam, and more. Feel free to reach out to her: [email protected].

Artist Statement: I’ve always been drawn to stories around me, and I’ve always found New York’s energy to be under my own investigation. One of my biggest influences is Marlon T. Riggs’s Tongues Untied (1989), an “experimental,” poetic documentary about the lives of queer black men. Riggs’s work left an impact on me, as it critiques the talking head nature of documentary and challenges what why we understand things as reality. I used footage of the subway, poetry readings from friends inhabiting minority spaces at NYU, and of course, glitch art in which I manipulated individual frames of movement.
To explore such a sensory-heavy place as the New York City subway, I married content and form to create a sort of synesthetic sense. I have synesthesia — Ordinal linguistic personification, and it changes my ability to describe “objectively.” Given the MTA’s recent crackdown on fare evasion, including the incident with 19-year-old Adrian Napier, I aim to describe how the subway is a transportation system and structure that reflects the active marginalization of its riders.

Judges’ Commentary:

  • Faye: Ambitious experimental short that invites us into the experience of synesthesia and the many layered visual/audio/verbal experience of the subway. The complex degraded image, the multiple layers of sound — the audio of the subway, spoken poetry, audio description — effectively communicate the sense of overload the subway can create for those with sensory differences, but unfortunately, it also makes the film difficult to grasp.  
  • Jason: It’s fascinating to watch. Because of the experimental nature of the film I was unable to make sense of all of the words, part of the reason for this I think is the filmmaker was pedantic and overstimulated the viewer with sounds and images at rapidfire, much like it is to ride the NYC Subway as a person with a disability.  
  • Alice: The experience of overstimulation on the subway was a daunting, submersive reward of this short experimental film. Visually fascinating and unpredictable, but I found myself, even in the short, growing slightly impatient waiting for the point.  

Judges:
Alice Elliott
Alice Elliott is an Academy Award® nominated director, writer, producer, advocate for the disabled, cinematographer, and recipient of a 2012 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship.  She is a full time distinguished faculty member at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Her short documentary The Collector of Bedford Street earned her a nomination for an Academy Award® and aired on HBO/Cinemax. She also directed and co-produced the film Body & Soul: Diana & Kathy, which aired on PBS for National Disability Awareness Month. She has been producing documentaries for nearly twenty years.

Faye Ginsburg
Faye Ginsburg is a Professor of Anthropology at New York University where she also serves as the co-director of NYU’s Center for Media, Culture, and History, as well as the Council for the Study of Disability, and the Center for Religion and Media. Her research centers around movements toward social progression, with early works focusing on abortion activists to her current work surrounding cultural innovation and learning disabilities. She is on the advisory board of the ReelAbilities Film Festival. She is also the President of the Familial Dysautonomia Foundation. 

Jason DaSilva
Jason DaSilva is a director, producer, writer, and disability rights activist, most known for his Emmy-award winning documentary film, When I Walk. His film follows his diagnosis of primary progressive multiple sclerosis for seven years and his journey of getting from cane to wheelchair. His work has been on PBS, HBO, CBC, and the New York Times. Outside of film, he is also the founder of AXS LAB, a non-profit organization, and AXS Map, a crowdsourced service that works to rate the accessibility of different businesses, restaurants and other public places.