Listen to this post:
I’m pretty sure the cat is already out of the bag. But I’ll give it an extra wiggle just in case: I love documentary films made by people inside the community being filmed! And here is a new one by Sins Invalid. It’s not just a documentary. There’s a whole soiree going on around the screening.
Sins Invalid Presents the
Crip Soiree & Speakeasy
Poetry, Song and a preview screening of the Sins Invalid Film
Friday and Saturday, October 11th and 12th at 7:00 pm
New Parkway Theater
474 24th St. Oakland, California
So what is the film?
“SINS INVALID is a REVOLUTION in both performance and society, a REVELATION showcasing bold new talent that audiences have been missing and an EVOLUTION where everything you think you know about disability is breathtakingly redefined…”- Lawrence Carter Long, Media enthusiast, Founder/Curator of the disTHIS! Film Series
The film is an unshamed claim to beauty. It’s a documentary about a performance project that celebrates artists with disabilities, centralizing artists of color and queer / gender-variant artists. Since 2006, its performances have explored sexuality, beauty, and the disabled body. Sins Invalid is an entryway into the taboo topic of sexuality and disability, manifesting a new paradigm – disability justice.
Read a wonderful write-up on the event at one of my favorite blogs, Where’s Lulu?
Get your tickets by clicking on this sentence.
Check out the Facebook event page clicking on this sentence.
To find out more about this performance group and the event, you can visit their site at www.sinsinvalid.org.
I will leave you with some final thoughts and images. I read a lot of blog posts, books and articles about disability. My favorites are the ones that point out that disability rights and justice do not exist in a vacuum. We won’t have full disability justice until we have justice in other marginalized groups around race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, age, immigrant status, financial status, and so many others. Too often I read thoughtful essays by feminists who make their feminist points by cracking a joke against disability. Or I hear people talk about the richness and benefit society gets when we include all forms of diversity. They go on to list a bunch of forms. Disability (or ability) is rarely ever mentioned in that list of groups of people we feel enrich society. At the same time, many disability movements are run by white people and have little involvement of people of color for a number of reasons.
This is why this documentary and this performance group are so important and valuable to the movement. Rights and justice are not achieved just through protests, marches, and legislation. Putting disabled bodies onstage is an act of resilience and resistance. When this group intertwines all these many identities and cultures, then you’ve got some real revolution.
