Friday, March 29, 2024
Home Women Business News With The Disability Film Challenge, Disabled Artists Take The Reins

With The Disability Film Challenge, Disabled Artists Take The Reins


Rachel Handler was living her dream. The New Jersey native was in New York City pursuing a career as an actress and performer in musical theater. She was the lead in popular productions, including Oklahoma, Kiss Me Kate, My Fair Lady, and The Music Man. 

In March of 2012, Handler drove from Astoria, Queens, to an audition in New Jersey. It was raining that day, and she found herself in a fender bender with another vehicle. She pulled over to the side of the road, got out of her car, and began discussing the incident with the other driver. As they were standing there, another car spun out of control and hit both women. Handler lost her leg on impact. The doctor said she didn’t bleed out because the car also crushed the rest of her leg, stopping her from losing too much blood. 

In an instant, Handler became an amputee, and part of the largest minority group in America: she was disabled. 

It was an emotional and lengthy recovery, but Handler took a trip back to New York City with a friend eight months later. She decided to take her first audition post-accident. 

“I was walking again without crutches. I was feeling good. I had a prosthetic leg that I laminated with this Paisley pillow pattern that I loved, and I was feeling good about it,” Handler said.

She entered the audition with confidence, only to be quickly deflated. 

“I got laughed out of that audition because of my prosthetic leg. They were like, ‘Oh, you have a great voice, but it’s a dance callback. I just laughed it off and left the room, you know, I didn’t know how to advocate at all for myself at the time.”

Discouraged, Handler stopped auditioning for months. 

But then, in 2014, she saw an email that changed everything. It was about a Disability Film Challenge, where artists— with and without disabilities— had the opportunity to collaborate and tell unique stories that showcase disability in its many forms. It was a weekend-long competition where filmmakers wrote, produced, and completed a three-to-five minute film after receiving an assigned genre, with a list of props and locations. 

The best part? Teams must integrate story elements that acknowledge disability and include at least one person with a physical or cognitive disability in front or behind the camera.

“I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, this is exactly what I need,” Handler said. “I was looking for a way to express myself and use my creativity and network with other filmmakers, so this was the perfect experience and the perfect timing. It reinvigorated me.”

Handler found a small team of people and submitted her first film. She went on to win ‘Best Actress.’ 

“I felt like I found this piece of myself that was missing,” she said. 

The Disability Film Challenge is the brainchild of Nic Novicki, a Hollywood actor, producer, and writer. Novicki is also a little person, and when he was coming up in the entertainment world, he quickly realized roles for someone who is 3’10 were few and far between. 

So he started creating his own content.

“I learned pretty early in my career if I want to be the gangster or romantic lead, or play interesting roles as an actor, aside from ones that I was lucky enough to audition for, that I needed to be in charge of my career and write and create my own content,” Novicki said.

“And I did that primarily through short films, through web series, and then eventually independent features.”

Creating his own content proved fruitful for Novicki, who has been in over 40 television shows and movies, such as The Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire, and The Good Doctor. He even got the chance to work with Martin Scorsese and the Farrelly Brothers.

“Each of my kind of personal milestones happened from me being already connected to somebody else, and the majority of that came from me producing my own content; they were able to see me play the kind of roles that I wanted to play,” he said.

“People have literally written roles for me based on stuff that I’ve created and just put out there in the world through social media.”

Then, in 2013, Novicki started wondering why more people with disabilities weren’t creating their own content and getting seen. He decided to develop the Disability Film Challenge— a weekend film competition requiring someone with a disability to be either in front or behind the camera.  

It was supposed to happen for only one year, but the response was so incredible, Novicki continued hosting the challenge each year after and expanding. In 2017, after partnering with Easterseals Southern California, a nonprofit that provides services, education, and outreach for people with disabilities, the challenge blossomed further. It has since become the Easterseals Disability Film Challenge, with sponsors that include Sony Entertainment, NBC Universal, Comcast, Viacom, and Adobe. 

According to the CDC, 61 million Americans identify as disabled. Yet, despite the number of people who identify as disabled, there is still little representation in television and films. According to the 2020 Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, which examined the portrayal of gender, race/ethnicity, LGBTQ, and disability in media from 2007 to 2019, even with slight gains in the number of characters with disabilities appearing in films over the years, the population is still essentially nonexistent. 

The Easterseals Disability Film Challenge hopes to change that.

“There’s a real problem of a lack of inclusion of people with disabilities in front of and behind the camera — we are the largest minority population in the world, roughly one in four have some form of disability, whether it’s physical or cognitive, yet we’re also the most underrepresented. So many people are aware of this problem, but with the film challenge, you can’t just talk about the problem; you have to be a part of the solution,” Novicki explained.

“You have to make a film, and you have to act, you have to edit, you have to write, you have to market your film. You have to get yourself out there. Our mission is to create opportunities for people in front and behind the camera with disabilities, and also to change the way the world views disabilities.”

The film challenge changed Nicole Lynn Evans’ world after she entered a few years ago. Since being a part of it, Evans, who has a brittle bone disorder called Osteogenesis Imperfecta and uses a wheelchair most of the time, has had several doors open for her acting career. She had a recurring role on NBC’s Superstore, she was in Freeform’s Good Trouble, and she just signed on to a recurring role on Netflix’s Special. 

According to Novicki, in 2019, after Evans made a film for the film challenge, Ryan O’Connell, the creator and star of Special, inquired about her.

“I remember him just being blown away by her. I was waiting for him to present an award for her performance, and he asked for a link to her film, and now she’s a recurring character in this season of that show,” Novicki said.

“And using that as a case study, I mean, both he and that production reached out for our crew list of talent for behind the camera that is part of the film challenge, so I was able to send in that crew list.”

“On his Instagram, he posted a trailer, and the vast majority of the people in one scene are all, film challenge talent.” 

Evans said the film challenge was a huge door opener.  

“It’s an incredible platform for artists with disabilities,” Evans said. “I really feel that the film challenge is changing the industry from the inside out.”

Handler agrees. Since entering the film challenge, she’s been a finalist and won various other film competitions with the movies she’s created. The film challenge also helped her obtain an agent, and in 2019 and 2020, she won ‘Best Awareness Campaign,’ with the film challenge.

This year’s film challenge pivoted to a home edition because of the Covid-19 pandemic. All filmmakers had around five days to create and enter their films. Novicki said this year had the most participation he’s ever seen, with 93 entries from around the world. 

Handler was one of those entries. She hopes her continual efforts eventually get her noticed so she can one day live out her dream — to be a showrunner on a quirky comedy series. 

“The film challenge influenced not only my acting career but also my producing and writing career. I now have the courage and the training to write more, and I’ve written a feature and a pilot, and I’m just like, really excited to see where it takes me,” she said.

“Without the disability film challenge, I don’t know if I ever would have had the strength or courage to just go for it,” she said.



Source link

- Advertisement -

Must Read

Related News

- Supported by -