Superfest International Disability Film Festival

SUPERFEST XXIIIV WINNERS


SUPERFEST International Media Festival on Disabilities is an annual media festival produced by Culture! Disability! Talent! (CDT). SUPERFEST honors works that positively and realistically portray the disability experience or warrant technical merit. The following contains a list and description of the award winners of SUPERFEST XXIIIV (2003).

For more information about next year's festival, please contact us at [email protected]

Best of Festival

Spirit Awards

Excellence Award

Achievement Awards

Merit Awards

Outstanding Promotional Media Awards

 

Descriptions of Award Winners

(CC= CLOSED CAPTIONED; OC= OPEN CAPTIONED; AD= AUDIO DESCRIBED)

BEST OF FESTIVAL
Born Freak
Producer: Paul Sapin
Director: Paul Sapin
Contact: Paul Sapin & Mat Fraser [email protected]
"Born Freak" is British disabled actor Mat Fraser's journey into the history of disabled performers, Freak Shows. We learn about their legendary disabled entertainers before Mat performs at the last surviving Freak Show in America. In Edinburgh, with a reactive one-man show, Mat's quest concludes in a dramatic finale.

SPIRIT AWARD
Annie Dearest OC
Producer: Terry Galloway & Donna Nudd
Director: Diane Wilkins
Contact: Diane Wilkins [email protected]
A short video parody of the disability classic, "The Miracle Worker." Satirizing the often brutal "teaching" relationship between deaf and blind Helen Keller and her mentor Annie Sullivan, the video features gallons and gallons of wah-wah.

EXCELLENCE AWARD
Annie Dearest OC
Producer: Terry Galloway & Donna Nudd
Director: Diane Wilkins
Contact: Diane Wilkins [email protected]
A short video parody of the disability classic, "The Miracle Worker." Satirizing the often brutal "teaching" relationship between deaf and blind Helen Keller and her mentor Annie Sullivan, the video features gallons and gallons of wah-wah.

EXCELLENCE AWARD
Kiss My Wheels
Producer: Terry Galloway & Donna Nudd
Director: Miguel Grunstein
Contact: Miguel Grunstein [email protected]
A nationally ranked junior wheelchair basketball team takes us through an extraordinary season of training and national tournament competition, living with disability on a rollercoaster of life, death and rebirth. It's about playing the game. It's about being yourself.

Achievement Awards
Horizon: The Ecstasy and the Agony CC, OC
Producer: Jemima Harrison
Director: Jemima Harrison
Contact: Stella Williams [email protected]
39-year-old Tim used to be a film stuntman. Now Parkinson's Disease is slowly freezing up his body, while his medication leads to uncontrollable twitching. But Tim's found an unusual, if illegal, way of relieving his symptoms, enabling him to perform backflips and somersaults, and confounding the medics. This is Tim's story.

Achievement Award
On A Roll Producer: Joanne Caputo
Director: Joanne Caputo
Contact: Joanne Caputo [email protected]
A black man is crusading for civil rights, but the issue is disability. Fueled by discrimination, Greg Smith founded On A Roll Talk Radio in 1992. The energetic show host encounters the biggest obstacles traveling in his own nation's capital and striving for relationships and an independent life.

Achievement Award
We Watch the City CC
Producer: Jerry Smith
Director: Jerry Smith
Contact: Jerry Smith [email protected]
This work is a documentary exploring New Yorkers with developmental and related disabilities and those who support them in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, September 2001.

Merit Award
A World Without Bodies OC
Producer: Mitchell & Snyder
Director: Mitchell & Snyder
Contact: Michelle Jarman [email protected]
"A World Without Bodies" documents the horror of the Nazi regime with respect to its treatment of disabled people, providing a haunting glimpse in to the medical and social mindset that led to the systematic slaughter of more than 240,000 disabled individuals during World War II.

Merit Award
In Cuba, Disabled AD, OC
Producer: Victor Pineda
Director: Victor Pineda
Contact: Victor Pineda [email protected]
In this provocative pilot documentary, Pineda investigates how the components that define disability in Cuba empower or limit the impaired within that society. Claiming to have one of the most advanced and comprehensive health care systems in the world, he explores to what degree Cuba incorporates disabled Cubans.

Merit Award
Men on Wheels Producer: Yahaly Gat
Director: Moran Zickerman
Contact: Yahaly Gat [email protected]
The story of two disabled war veterans reveals their intimate relationship with their spouses and children. Through wheelchair dancing, they try to overcome their impaired sexual self-image and handicap.

Merit Award
OCD: The War Inside CC
Producer: National Film Board of Canada
Director: Mark Pancer & David Hoffert
Contact: Kelli English [email protected]
"OCD: The War Inside" elicits painful stories while also exploring the causes and possible solutions of this often misunderstood condition which affects millions of Americans.

Merit Award
The Perfect Flaw
Producer: Mike Grundmann
Director: Mike Grundmann
Contact: Mike Grundmann [email protected]
With a facial birth defect others would shudder to have, David Roche quit his day job and put his face on stage.

Outstanding Promotional Media Awards
"Dan" Commercial OC
Producer: Cingular Wireless
Director: Cingular Wireless
Contact: Tari Susan Hartman [email protected]
Since Cingular Wireless' "Dan" spot first appeared during Superbowl 2000, it has received critical acclaim from disability leaders nationwide. The commercial illuminates Cingular Wireless' commitment to diversity that includes people with disabilities in employment, customer service, wireless accessibility task force and bills in Braille and large print.

Outstanding Promotional Media Awards
Hose, Cards & Water Balloons CC
Producer: Mark Conly
Director: Sean Ehringer
Contact: Jacqueline Garrett [email protected]
Three Public Service Announcements produced in cooperation with the Personal Assistance Crisis Team (PACT) in Berkeley, California to recruit attendants and i

For additional information on the films and producers, please contact us at [email protected].

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