Kudos to Mat! Fascinating situation. Folks at the festival enjoyed more
audience members than they could handle. We should all be sending "Thank
You" cards to BAFTA and dreaming up similar controversies of our very own.

Stay tuned. disTHIS! is on tap to screen "Freak Show" once the film is
completed.

When we do, would some of you protest us -- PLEASE?! ;)

All my Best,

Lawrence

=======================================================

Link:
http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,,2256454,00.html

By Mat Fraser in London

Guardian News Service: A top manager at the British Academy awards has
admitted to feeling 'uncomfortable' with screening a movie made by and
about disabled people. Rubbish, says disabled actor Mat Fraser. We need
more films about 'freaks'.

"Gooble, gobble - we accept her - one of us!" No, sadly not the cry from
the audience at the recent British Academy awards (Baftas) as disabled
actors/directors/writers/producers went up to collect their prize, but the
cry of the disabled wedding guests in the carnival circus as they welcome
a non-disabled woman into their fold, in one of my favourite films of all
time, Freaks.

I saw Tod Browning's legendary 1932 banned-then-reissued film about 18
years ago. It blew my mind. Set in a freak show, it had lots of real,
disabled, freaky people, with lady beards, stick-thin bodies, no legs, no
arms, dwarfism, obesity, pin heads, conjoined torsos and so on, coming
together against their evil oppressor to defend one of their own, control
the retribution, and make the nasty lady "one of us". It is truly
shocking,75-odd years after it was made.

So, how come some disabled film-makers are returning to the freak show?
Why are we exploiting the freakish way we are often perceived as a means
of exploration, acceptance, and even enjoyment? Isn't that shooting
ourselves in the club foot? Well, maybe you could find out by watching The
Last American Freak Show, by the disabled film-maker Richard Butchins,
which follows a travelling freak show around the US for 10 weeks.

The naturalplace to see it would be the 8th London International
Disability Film Festival, currently running at BFI Southbank in London.
Sadly, you won't be able to see it there, because it made Corinna Downing,
Bafta's head of events, "feel uncomfortable".

Heaven forbid that anyone should be made to feel uncomfortable by a film
about disability made by a disabled person ... OK, no more bitter crip
anger, but come on! We wouldn't put up with a white or straight person's
reacting fearfully to a black or gay film-maker's viewpoint - but Bafta
got freaked out, so, unsurprisingly, it suggested a non-disabled-made film
(Lars and the Real Girl), about a learning-disabled man (played by a
non-disabled actor) who falls in love with a sex doll, with a feelgood
factor! The idea makes me laugh, albeit with a cruel and freakishly
twisted mouth of horror.

The evolution of the disability film genre - for there is one - has been
fascinating to watch over the past decade. It's true that it started with
many badly made films full of great ideas, but it has been woefully
unfunded and full of unskilled people with little access to professional
equipment or resources. Nonetheless, there have been occasional pearls,
and they are getting more frequent.

The array of work from disabled film-makers is incredible. Have a look at
the work of the collective Shoot Your Mouth Off, which has been making
disability horror - now there's a new film genre for you - and kung fu
films for two years. The Disability Film Festival is as rich as any film
festival one might find. Well, not quite as rich, because the flagship
film was pulled because of non-disabled people's fears, but Butchins' film
has got more publicity from that than it would otherwise have done, as has
the festival, so maybe it's not all bad. I mean, you might even try to see
it now, whereas before it was pulled you might never have known it
existed.

There have been some excellent films about the freakish over these past
years, foregoing feelgood factors for real good actors, dealing with the
ugly, the fetishised, and other issues that you just won't see in the
non-disabled world of Forrest Gump, Rain Man, or even the recent Inside
I'm Dancing. Indeed, with those movies being the most high-profile
representation of disabled people, it's little wonder that many disabled
film-makers have turned away from trying to secure big budgets, with the
equally big compromises they entail, and have instead taken smaller
budgets to make the films they want to make.

Disabled film-lovers, and their moreclued-up mates, have been enjoying
those movies at the festival for the past seven years. It's been an
exciting time, watching the growth in talent, ideas and accomplishment
among disabled film-makers. Which makes it all the more outrageous that
the Disability Film Festival may not exist next year, when the UK's Arts
Council withdraws its funding from its organisers, the London Disability
Arts Forum.

At the 2002 festival, Freaks was shown and celebrated as the true landmark
it is, for it changed the cultural landscape for many of us disabled
artists. We began to reassess, research, and rediscover some of the
multi-layered power dynamics that the film contains, the schadenfreude of
it all, the staring, the obsessive revulsion and attraction. Disabled
film-makers began making new work to explore the issues raised, and the
best of these films have further changed our shifting perspectives.

There is even my own documentary, Born Freak, made a few years ago, in
which I took to the stage of the Coney Island Circus Sideshow as my
historical predecessor, Sealo the Sealboy.

Although it was a TV film, like the other two and like most of the other
new films coming through, Born Freak looks at the stuff people find
uncomfortable, and, above all, it directly accepts the need to stare and
ask questions about disabled people, instead of the pretence of PC's awful
politeness. This contrasts starkly with the utter hypocrisy of the
mainstream film industry's attitude to disabled people: using them for
pity and Oscars, but not wanting the reality of either their presence or
their real stories on screen. Ironically, the only stuff coming out of
Hollywood that's any good with disability, for me, is the so-called
offensive stuff by the Farrelly brothers.

Along with horror, comedy, and action, I'm not surprised that this
mini-genre has grown within the disabled film-making community. We're
going back to our roots. We've been getting on with the filmic development
of our own culture while being roundly ignored by the non-disabled world,
so of course it's shocking to them when we surface with celebrations and
acceptance of something they've been told to think of as bad. Not that I
think disabled film-makers are saying "Freak show good, romantic comedy
bad" per se, just that its OK to go freaky too, as well as having a
rom-com with a wheelchair-using actor. Oh sorry, no crip rom-com yet from
Hollywood. Hollyweird.

We haven't had the disabled Spike Lee-style breakthrough figure that I was
so hoping we would get (we haven't even had the Sidney Poitier figure
yet), but we are now at last seeing some films and film-makers come
through to show our real histories, unsweetened, brutal, raw, visceral and
honest, and to deal head-on with the issues they raise, for all concerned.

My personal dream (remembering that I'm a freakishly disabled actor, who
loves this subject) of an actual remake (with tweaks) of Freaks grows ever
closer. It's something we often talk about, hoping for the role of a
lifetime while fearing non-disabled actors with Oscars syndrome. We hope
that one day, a film-maker with clout, money, experience and talent will
come along, bite the bullet and make it. I know it might seem like
Cripsploitation, but to me it's Beautiful Freaks, and if you want to
really find out about this rich vein of alternative film, please go to the
festival. You might get freaked out, but it'll be worth it.

The London Disability Film festival runs until February 18 at the BFI
Southbank, London.