The Disability Film Festival will hit close to home this year.
Locals will be featured both in the chosen film as well as in short films produced in student-taught theater workshops for people with disabilities.
“Gleason,” the film chosen for 2017’s festival, is a documentary about former Washington State University football player Steve Gleason, who has ALS.
“He’s kind of a hometown boy, he’s got some family in the area as well,” said Jen Magelky-Seiler, a member of the Self Advocate Leadership Network (SALN).
Magelky-Seiler said this is the first film featuring a person with an acquired disability rather than a developmental disability. She said this illustrates that people can become disabled at any period in their life.
“Right now, and in general, people with disabilities don’t have a strong voice in Idaho or even nationwide, so when issues come up, their issues kind of get ignored,” she said.
Magelky-Seiler said SALN empowers people with disabilities to speak up about issues that affect them. She said part of this is educating the public about disabilities.
“The film festival is really about raising awareness and creating understanding,” Magelky-Seiler said. “People with disabilities lead really cool lives, even though a lot of our society and our stereotypes about people with disabilities seem to think that we don’t.”
The festival began four years ago through a collaboration between SALN and Families Together. Artists Striving to End Poverty (ASTEP), a University of Idaho student organization, joined three years ago, providing theater workshops for children and adults with disabilities.
ASTEP Vice President Gina Workman said this is the first year workshop participants will produce films. The past two years, they performed live at the festival.
“Since we’re only meeting once a week, it’s hard to really get a quality performance out of that,” Workman said. “Also we felt that it would reduce nerves of performers being able to just film in front of a camera.”
She said filming additionally allows participants the rare opportunity of seeing themselves on a big screen if they want. She said people in the workshops can choose to be an actor, director, technician or a combination of all three.
“Two guys are interested in directing and acting so they get to kind of explore both sides,” she said.
Developmental Director of Families Together Denise Wetzel said the classes themselves are beneficial, especially for children on the autism spectrum, as they teach skills such as taking turns when speaking and understanding other perspectives.
“Instead of saying, ‘oh,’ you know, ‘we’re going to go to social skills class,’ you say ‘oh, we’re going to theater class,’” Wetzel said. “It’s just more fun for the kids.”
Workman said she never worked with adults with disabilities before and the idea initially made her nervous. However, she said she enjoyed the experience, and encourages people to become involved in communities they aren’t familiar with. She said one theme brought up throughout the production process was that everyone is essentially the same.
“You can label people all you want,” she said. “But when it comes down to it, we’re all human and we’re all going through this thing called life.”
The festival will be held 7 p.m. April 28 at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre. Admission is free, but attendees are encouraged to bring canned goods, which will be donated to the Moscow Food Bank.
Nina Rydalch
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