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Cinema Touching Disability Film Festival

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In 2004, William Greer, a CTD staff member and traumatic brain injury survivor who is visually impaired, had an idea: create a film festival to counter negative stereotypes about people with disabilities and to celebrate positive portrayals of disability culture. Because of the powerful role that cinema plays in American culture, film is an effective medium to reach and engage a large and diverse audience. That fall, CTD held its First Annual Cinema Touching Disability Film Festival, screening and discussing films that illustrate how well, and how poorly, people with disabilities are portrayed in motion pictures. It was the first film festival in Texas with an explicit focus on disability.

Since its inception, Cinema Touching Disability audiences have been exposed to a wide variety of short and feature films, television series, and web series, from documentaries to animation pieces to silent films. For example, attendees in 2004 viewed the very first cinematic portrayal of disability: "The Fake Beggar," an 1898 short by Thomas Edison. Long thought to be lost, this 45-second film was publicly screened for the first time in over a century at our festival. A few years later, CTD premiered "Shattering Stereotypes on Mt. Everest," a documentary featuring the award-winning Team Everest '03 and local Austin climber Gary Guller. In 2009, CTD partnered with local filmmakers to screen "The Eyes of Me," a documentary that follows four blind teenagers over the course of a year at the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired. The following year, the festival screened the award-winning HBO film "Temple Grandin," at which CTD premiered our exclusive interview with Temple Grandin herself. In addition to feature length and short films, CTD screens the winning entries of our ever-popular Short Film Competition.

In 2007, CTD introduced the Student Film Competition to the Festival line-up, including a category for both high school and college students. The vision behind this portion of the Festival is to encourage and empower emerging filmmakers to generate innovative film that addresses social, cultural, and personal perceptions about and experiences with disability. Volunteer judges select the first, second, and third place winners in both categories and a poll during the Festival determines the Audience Favorites. Winners enjoy cash and prizes, interviews with local media outlets, and a public screening of their film at the Festival.

Participation in the Competition has steadily increased since 2007, owing to changes CTD has made and the Festival's growing visibility in film and disabilities communities. In 2009, we redefined the Competition categories to Scholastic (6th through 12th grades) and Emerging (18+ years); that year, we began to receive films from outside the United States. Then, in 2011, we incorporated withoutabox, an online submission system that allows filmmakers to upload their films directly to the Competition. This proved to be immensely popular among entrants worldwide; the Competition received 50 entries through withoutabox, including the Grand Prize winning film, which came from Iran.

The Short Film Competition both educates and entertains Festival audiences and filmmakers, and in only a few years, it has become arguably the most popular element of Cinema Touching Disability.