Weaving together never-before-seen archival footage with reflective interviews and the personal stories of men and women with disabilities, Defiant Lives details the rise of the disability rights movement in Australia, the U.K., and the U.S.
Filmmaker Bio
Sarah Barton is a filmmaker with more than 20 years experience and has focused mainly on making films about disability. Her first major film, Untold Desires (1994) about sexuality and disability, won the first Logie Award for SBS television and an AFI Award for most outstanding documentary. In 2003 Sarah created and produced the first 70 episodes of the award winning disability community television series No Limits. Sarah’s short documentary Stroke A Chord (2012) about a choir of stroke survivors who can sing but not speak was a finalist in the ATOM Awards in 2013. Between 2011 and 2015, Sarah worked as Chief Executive Officer of Disability Media Australia an organization she co-founded in 2005. She also returned to No Limits in the role of Executive Producer mentoring and training disabled producers, cast and crew. In 2015 Sarah returned to her production company Fertile Films to complete Defiant Lives and recently launched an online video distribution platform DisabilityBusters.com
A Deaf woman searching for her missing friend encounters a mysterious alien struggling to come to terms with its traumatic past. Deafening Darkness is a collaboration between Deaf and hearing filmmakers, in the first all Deaf cast psychological horror of its kind to come out of Toronto!
A one-day shoot where the entire crew is deaf, except an aspiring hearing production coordinator who comes to work without knowing the life-changing experience that awaits him.
The design studio La Casa de Carlota in Barcelona harnesses the unique skills of a creative team which includes members with Down syndrome and autism.
Accessibility aids thanks to support from AppNexus.
Billed as the “female Michael Jordan”, basketball phenom Holdsclaw led Tennessee to three successive championships and became a WNBA number-one pick, Rookie of the Year and All-Star. But her hidden struggle with mental illness led to personal setbacks and a second career as a vocal mental health advocate.
A nurse confronts his principles when he’s asked to aid two patients in assisted sex.
Leo, a “vertically challenged” public officer and comedian, is about to marry Carol, a teacher who is 5’5″ tall.
Accessibility aids thanks to support from AppNexus.
In this wildly original dark comedy, two teenaged boys living in a facility for children with disabilities are looking for a way out. When they befriend a gruff firefighter-turned-hitman who enlists them to be his accomplice wheelchair assassins, they enter a surreal world of gangsters and guns, all the while coming to terms with their respective disabilities. With stellar cinematography, a mix of live action and graphic animation, and a dark sense of humor, Kills on Wheels successfully blends genres, dealing with issues of invisibility, prejudice, and loneliness as it rolls on to exciting, offbeat places. Hungary’s 2016 Oscar submission for Best Foreign Film.
Hungarian with English captioning
Private Investigators Lefty and Loosey uncover a diabolical plot and must save the world.
