Tabakalera is a former tobacco factory in San Sebastián, which was converted into a contemporary culture centre. It’s the venue where take place the Film Talks of the San Sebastián International Film Festival (SSIFF), created to promote dialogue on film from an industrial, creative and educational perspective. The conversation “Diversity and Inclusion on and off the Screen” was an opportunity to reflect on the issue of the proper representation of disabilities in films and, more generally, on the contribution of people with disabilities to the film industry.
The perspective on the subject has been strongly British, also because the moderator of the conversation (available in English at this link) was Clare Baines, who has worked for the British Film Institute (BFI) since the role of Disability Equality Lead was created a few years ago. As is customary in these kinds of meetings, she first gave a brief description of herself, for those who were blind or visually impair
The first speaker, activist Shani Dhanda, is also second-generation British. Her talk was an effective summary (it would be perfect for schooling) of what disability is. She expressed some basic concepts: disability is not a condition but an experience that occurs when barriers are created or prejudices are faced; it’s worthwhile to move from a medical model (providing cure or prosthetics for those with disabilities without changing the environment around them) to a social model (changing the environment that creates barriers and inequalities); disability can affect anyone, even in a temporary way, so any change affects everyone; equitably treatment should be replaced with addressing the cause of inequity; many technologies we regularly use today was invented to deal with some disability, so accessibility is a benefit to all
If a world that no longer creates inequality is an ideal to aspire to, why can’t we also imagine a cinema that reflects it, rather than limiting the representation of disabilities as happened to date? A really good way to do this is to involve people with disabilities in the film industry; during his talk, the second speaker, director and producer Justin Edgar, showed behind-the-scenes materials of some of the films he has produced.
In addition to increasing the credibility of the stories, if acted by someone who has real experience of what is being shown, it’s reasonable to involve those with a disability in the work behind the camera as well, even when this increases production costs: in the United Kingdom there is dedicated funding for this purpose, because it has been understood that a more authentic representation in audiovisual products is impossible without greater direct involvement of those who can bring their specific point of view. Moreover, it’s worth remembering that people with disabilities are a very large segment of the market, albeit neglected so far.
A BFI rule brought to the attention of the audience by Baines is the allocation of fund only for film productions committed to correct representation of minorities. Edgar acknowledged that nowadays it would no longer be acceptable, as happened in 2010 in one of his films, for non-disabled actor Andy Serkis to play the role of singer Ian Dury, who for most of his life had a partly paralysis on the left-hand side of his body. The same does not always happen outside the UK; on these same issues, it’s interesting to tell something about the provocative films of young Argentine director Federico Luis presented in San Sebastián.
Luis, when he was a teacher’s assistant at a drama school for people with disabilities, met aspiring actor Pehuén Pedre and became friends with him (even during the festival, we often saw them together). In the short film Cómo ser Pehuén Pedre, written by both of them, Pedre tutor two actors in imitating him, so that they could get a disability certificate (which for him is not a burden, but a privilege). What cinema has always shown us is amazingly turn upside-down: not actors imitating another person’s disability through observation, but a person explaining his disability and how to reproduce it, how to move the eyes, which tics to copy, what to answer to standard questions.
Starting form this idea, Luis directed his first feature film Simón de la montaña (presented in the Horizontes Latinos section) whose main character is one of the two actors of the short, Lorenzo Ferro. He plays Simón, who has been haning out with a group of young people with disabilities for a short time, and in fact little is known about him. He doesn’t have a disability certificate, which is why his friend Pehuén tutors him in getting one. Why Simón behaves this way is unclear: during the film we never see him to stop imitating disability, sure enough we might believe that Lorenzo Ferro is really playing the role of a disabled person and not someone pretending to be disabled, if not for the scenes with his mother and her partner who treat him with increasing annoyance. His total immersion in the role, however, makes him accepted by the kids he hangs out with, who know the truth about him; thanks to him, we can observe from the inside their lives as teenagers and, above all, we understand how absolutely ordinary they are, and how ordinary their families are. Simón does not create barriers, but breaks them down, with his behavior: it’s a high-level conceptual provocation on the proper cinematic representation of disabilities.
