Prejudice & Discrimination

The world over, people with disabilities encounter prejudice and discrimination and numerous films over the years have been produced which acknowledge or describe this situation. These productions reveal a new slant, which is candid presentations about how disabled people and their families feel about and react to being devalued.

  1. Disability & Community Produced by Leonard Cheshire Foundation International as the introduction to a series of video courses packages for those working with children and adults with intellectual impairments in developing countries. Filmed primarily in Malaysia, this overview includes comments from individuals from Sri Lanka and the Philippines. 15 minutes (Series described under the theme of CBR). - Available from Leonard Cheshire, 30 Millbank, London, U.K. SW1P 4QD, E-mail: info@london.leonard-cheshire.org.uk. 

  2. Olivia & Tim: Very Much Alive Produced 1993, documentary tracing the development of a mutually supportive friendship between a woman who was ostracised in the 1930's because of leprosy and a man who is fighting the stigma attached to AIDS. Many parallels of how the public fears these two diseases, one ancient and one modern, are discussed. 60 minutes

  3. Our Children, Our Hopes Produced 1994 by Pacer Centre in Chicago to document the experiences of African-American families as they seek services for their children with disabilities. Prejudices of service providers and the community are discussed in depth by fathers and mothers. Also described are their coping techniques they developed to extract services from the system. 15 minutes - Available from: Pacer Centre 4826 Chicago Avenue South, Minneapolis, MN 55417-1055 USA Fax: 1 612 827-3065.

  4. Prejudice: Answering Children's Questions and Growing Up in the Age of AIDS produced by ABC News. Both are programs of 75 minutes where a group of children are discussing each topic with a facilitator and several experts. The first programme on prejudice includes issues relating to disability as well as the commonalties between all types of prejudice. Both can be used as part of community education programmes for general audiences, but can also serve as models for productions that can be done in other countries on sensitive issues like prejudice and AIDS. - Available from: MPI Home Video, Dept. ABC, 15825 Ss. Rob Roy Dr., Oak Forest, IL 60452, USA.

  5. Public Service Announcements on Disability produced in 1988 by the Government of Pakistan and UNICEF-Islamabad. The country's first television PSAs about and featuring children with mental handicap, emphasising the need to play with and help these children develop in the same manner as other children. Non-disabled children and parents of children with mental handicap describe their fears, first encounters and practical suggestions with the general public. Approximately 15 minutes (Urdu with English sub-titles). - Available from: UNICEF - Islamabad, c/o 3 U.N. Plaza, New York, N.Y. 10017 USA.

  6. Reaching for a Dream. Produced in 1991 by United Church of Christ, a series of vignettes illustrating how ethnic Americans with disabilities experience social barriers and prejudice in their commuimmigrant and they describe prejudice encountered in work, social situations, education and religious activities. 30 minutes - Available from Office of Communication, United Church of Christ, 700 Prospect Ave., Cleaveland, OH 44115. Tel. 800-325-7061.

  7. Sister and Her Brother is a film that won an RI Film Festival award at the RI Tokyo World Congress. It is about two people who meet on a blind date and the woman is surprised when she finds out the man is disabled with cerebral palsy. Trying to run way before he sees her, she runs into a tree and bangs her head, at which time he does see her. At the same time, this woman's brother is on a separate blind date. The two couples meet at a restaurant and go through many of the difficult and sometimes humorous experiences of being with a disabled person - staring, waiters ignoring the disabled person, people moving away like the person is drunk, etc. The woman and her disabled date start to get along well and she and her brother get to know and enjoy the company of many people with disability. 17 minutes. - Available from: Insurance Rehabilitation Agency, Hopeatie 2, Helsinki 00440, Finland.

  8. The Access Games is a video that was made in 1988 as part of Australia's Bicentennial. The country established Bicentennial Access Awards which gave communities money for projects that improved access and facilities for people with disabilities. The video is a 25 minute presentation of some of the access problems that affect nearly 2 million people with disabilities. Guest celebrities "simulate" disabilities, one using a wheelchair and another using tunnel vision glasses. What is different, however, is that they are guided by people with disabilities who tell them how they negotiate and confront the barriers of travel and communication. The two men using wheelchairs humorously depict using a subway train system with lack of sufficient access. The actress using the tunnel vision glasses is told by her blind partner how she gets daily clues about where she is from people talking, money clanging, footsteps, the size of different denominations of money, etc. The actress expresses her fear, especially about safety, even when someone comes to her assistance and their taking of her arm becomes unnerving. A woman who is hearing impaired also gives numerous practical suggestions on how communities can help people with hearing impairments with their activities of daily living. - Available from: The Bicentennial Access Australia Awards, 44 Alfred Street, Milsons Point, NSW 2061 Australia. Cost is Australia $ 25.00.

  9. TV Spots on Attitudes Toward Children who are Spastics Produced by the Spastics Society of Eastern India. One depicts a young teenage girl who is spastic enjoying outdoor activities with a teenage boy. Another shows the integration of young children who are spastic in everyday activities of family living, as well as simple rehabilitation and education activities. Approximately 10 minutes. - Available from: Spastics Society of Eastern India, P 35/1, Taratolla Road, Calcutta-700 088 INDIA. Fax: 91 33 4784177

  10. Born to Live is a landmark film about the lives of two severely disabled Hong Kong men. It was produced by Radio Television Hong Kong with support of the local rehabilitation community and stands out as one of the most popular films designed to educate the public about disability. The two men speak nearly entirely for themselves and they "act" in the film along with their real families and community. It takes into account many "Asian" attitudes toward disability, as well as some of the real positive changes that have taken place over the past decade due to films such as this one. Request English subtitles. - Available from: Hong Kong Council of Social Services, 15 Hennessy Road, Hong Kong, SAR.

  11. A Passion for Justice is an award winning film by Ron Gould about Bob Perske, the author of Unequal Justice, and a crusader for the rights of people with developmental disabilities. After fighting for de-institutionalisation of people with disabilities and for their inclusion in mainstream society, Perske has come to find a number of ways in which mainstreaming can leave them vulnerable. Focusing on cases in which people with developmental disabilities have been convicted of crimes they did not commit, this video asks challenging questions about society's responsibility to protect everyone's rights to equal justice. The video is 29 minutes and costs $195.00. - Available from: Fanlight Productions, 47 Halifax Street, Boston, MA 02130 USA, Fax: 1 617 524 8838. Email: fanlight@tiac.net

  12. Sylvie's Words is a wonderful story of a woman who learns that she is HIV positive after the birth of her second daughter. Gradually she learns to accept the virus as her personal destiny. She also gets involved in awareness projects an initiates a coming-out movement which focuses attention on individuals rather than the abstract phenomenon. She openly discusses the range of feelings from guilt to shame as well as the courage to become honest about her disease in order to truly be honest with herself. - Available from: Horizon Films, 15 Chemin Claire-Vue, CH 1213, Petit-Lancy France, Fax: 41 22 79 31 077.

  13. As Others See Us. Twenty-four people with some form of disability, who are integrated into society, talk in turn about their lives. Through words and images, problems emerge which affect us all: hope, anxiety about the future, dependency, other people's attitudes, the way they stare and, above all, the fear of the non-disabled when they see a disabled person. Director: Fernando E. Solanas - Interviews: Monique Saladin. A 1980, 1h,40 minutes video. Original version in French. Subtitles in English, Greek, Dutch, German, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese. - Available from: Starfilm International: 91 rue Saint Honoré 75001, Paris, France. Tel. 33 1 40 26 11 60. Fax. 33 1 45 08 80 99.
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