MORE THAN A SCREEN

MORE THAN A SCREEN
Where Film Becomes a Bridge to Understanding
Exclusive Interview with Isaac Zablocki
Featured in 'Innerviews'
Hosted by Allié McGuire

​Film has the power to entertain, but at its best, it has the power to connect. For Isaac Zablocki, that connection is the point, using storytelling to close the distance between lived experience and public perception. Through ReelAbilities, he’s not just showcasing films, he’s inviting us into a deeper, more human way of seeing.

ALLIÉ: You’ve spent your life, Isaac, spent your career creating space for stories that the world hasn’t always made room for. So first question is, was there a moment early on when you realized that this wasn’t just about film for you, but about changing how people see each other?

ISAAC: I think I’ve always felt that film is an amazing tool to help give people access into worlds and windows that we normally don’t see into in a very, very powerful way. The emotional experience, the impact on our senses is so strong, and good storytelling can really, I mean, this is something I’ve experienced my whole life, it’s amazing how storytelling can really pass along a message.

Just last night, I was reading my daughter a story for bedtime, and I was experiencing through her how she wanted a story that had a moral and how a good and exciting story can really teach that lesson that otherwise would be hard to access. So it’s really always been there for me. And it’s something that I feel very strongly about. I feel that with the power of film, with great power comes great responsibility. So we need to present the right films. And unfortunately, disability specifically has been misrepresented when it is actually presented, mostly not presented, and often overlooked and forgotten. And if we’re not seeing these images in our films, then we’re not going to see them in real life either.
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ALLIÉ: Yeah, no, that’s powerful and that’s right on. So let’s talk more about that. ReelAbilities doesn’t tell safe storybook stories about disability, it tells human ones. Complex, funny, uncomfortable, real. So what do you think we get most wrong as a society when we try to tell stories about people we don’t fully understand? Where do we miss the mark so much?

ISAAC: My God. How much time do we have? I’ll say first of all, I love that you put, you know, in quotations, this idea. There are so many misconceptions when it comes to disability. So I’ll get started and throw out some of the big ones.

First of all, I think that disability is difference, and people fear difference. So I think that’s part of where this all stems from, and the misrepresentation often comes from there.

Disability traditionally has been, when it’s presented, either as something, in the best cases, extremely heroic, or in most cases as something negative. Often the bad guys will have a disability while the good guys will be able-bodied.
There’s also the misrepresentation of pity. A lot of big Hollywood films love to present some side of disability as being pitiful, and that’s not a good representation for our very, very diverse community.

But most offensive, I’ll say, is that Hollywood has often presented disability as a life not worth living. There are big movies, Oscar-winning films, Million Dollar Baby as an example, Me Before You, another one, where disability comes with a kind of dehumanization.

And that’s why I love the movies that show disability in every way, in the most normal way. Eating breakfast, the girlfriend, the love interest, the best friend, the doctor, whatever it might be.

But also, let’s take it further. Disability doesn’t have to be just in whatever forms you expect. Let them be the bank robber. Let us be a character that is completely out there, and not because of their disability. Really show that diversity that exists within our community.

ALLIÉ: Yeah, I love that. Absolutely. So let’s be the bad guy. Let’s be the sexy star. We can be all these things. And I love that you point out that disability is just eating breakfast. What does that look like? It doesn’t have to be about the difficulty of it. It can be just how it’s you living life, just in a different way.

ISAAC: It’s funny. I think it was our first year, we had a film called, I’m trying to remember its name, it was about a guy who was making a movie about a group of young people with disabilities, I think teenagers.

They were kind of exposing all the clichés that exist there. And one of the big ones was the “climbing the mountain” cliché. Let’s have a group of disabled people climb a mountain and show how they overcome their obstacles. And all of those words are offensive to our ReelAbilities ears.

This movie made fun of that concept. And to this day, we get so many “climbing the mountain” movies about the disability community. It is such a cliché.

The emphasis on the obstacles is really not something that needs to be the focus. I think you need obstacles for drama, but not the disability obstacles. Those are not the ones that create drama.

And let’s not reward our community for doing simple tasks or doing them merely because they have a disability. Let’s reward our community for the great and amazing things that are done regardless of our disabilities.

ALLIÉ: Yeah, I agree a thousand percent. So let’s talk about someone who has never experienced ReelAbilities before. In your words, what does it feel like to come into that space for the first time?
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​ISAAC: So first of all, I hope that they would feel like they’re coming into a professional film festival setting like any other. You might be greeted at the door by a person with a disability, because much of our staff are people with visible disabilities and invisible disabilities as well.

You’re going to enter a space that’s going to be as accessible as possible. But just to give the contrast, we want it to be seamless. We want you possibly not to notice that this is not a “special environment.” We want it to be a great film environment. That’s what’s special about us.

For instance, our films are shown with open captions. The captions are there, but hopefully they feel normal. I turn on captions on my screen constantly. Mainstream movies offer this too, and of course foreign films. So there should be nothing too challenging there.

Our audio description is not open. People can use a special headset or follow it on their phones. We have sensory-friendly spaces, so people, if they need to leave, can do that.

Our conversations include an ASL interpreter next to me when I introduce a film, and we have live stenography called CART, live captions for the entire conversation before and after the film.

Again, we try to present it as seamlessly as possible. My favorite is when it’s just baked into everything. The captions feel like part of the movie, or the audio description is built into the script.

One thing you might notice, which is amazing, is the community. We aim for everybody to join, including a mainstream audience, but you will see a lot more people with disabilities than you normally would.

At some screenings, we’ll have 40 wheelchair users. If you go to a typical theater, you might not even find that many accessible seats.

We screened a film called Deaf President Now last year, and the majority of the audience was deaf. If you were a hearing person, you were in the minority. The conversation was moderated by a deaf woman, and the interpretation was there for the hearing audience. It flipped everything on its head. It was an amazing experience.

ALLIÉ: That is beautiful. That’s so wild to flip the narrative. There’s something really powerful about seeing yourself reflected on the screen for the first time in an authentic way. Could you share a story? Have you witnessed a moment at one of your festivals where you thought, this is why I do all of this?

​ISAAC: That’s exactly it. Those are my favorite moments. It happens every year. Either we present a disability that’s never been shown before, or someone comes for the first time and sees themselves.

To hear people say, “This is the first time I’m seeing myself on screen.”

One year, we showed a film about nonverbal men with autism. They were there for the Q&A, and everything was done through live typing on the screen. There was a child in the audience who was also nonverbal. He had an iPad and asked a question. He felt so connected to seeing people like him. And of course, his question was profound, much better than most, because it came from lived experience. The answers that came back were things you would never get even from professionals. It was beautiful.

Another moment was a mother who saw a film about a child with a disability. She told us, “I now understand my daughter in new ways.” She had new language to describe what her daughter experiences. That’s incredible.

ALLIÉ: It really is. It just blows my mind that we don’t know what we don’t know until we see it, until we feel it.
One more question for you. Beyond all of this, beyond the films, beyond the festivals, beyond the movement, how do you hope people see each other differently because of what you’ve built?

ISAAC: I hope that people will have more comfort.

I’ll go back to another screening where we had two nonverbal men in a Q&A. Both were brilliant, poetic, completely self-aware. But if you saw them on the street, you might cross to the other side because they make sounds and don’t communicate verbally.

Through these films, you get to see the humanity, as you mentioned, and hopefully that takes away our fear of difference. It’s okay to be different. Our instinct is to fear what’s out of the ordinary. But out of the ordinary can be some of the most beautiful things in this world.

I hope people will be able to disclose their disability more easily, that people will hire more inclusively, and that disability will be visible in our real world and not something we whisper about or hide. The Americans with Disabilities Act, which was passed over 30 years ago, created a legal change that disability inclusion has to happen. I’m hoping now that the cultural change will happen. Hopefully, there’s no better way to change culture than through film. ∎
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Learn more about ReelAbilities:
​reelabilities.org