Crip News v.169

Screen digest, new works, new honors, not new news, other news, calls, and events.

Feb 03, 2025

A Screen Digest

A black-and-white archival image of Elizabeth Bouvia, center, in her wheelchair. She holds a pillow in her lap, and gazes ahead — mouth agape and head slightly to the side. Around her, four male lawyers in suits are staged around her, staring at her seriously. Behind her to the left, one of the lawyers crosses his arms at his chest while looking down at her, as if to scold her. A laurel overlays the image with text that says “WINNER, U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award. Sundance Film Festival. 2025.”

Life After, a documentary about “the missing voices of the disabled community in the contemporary debate around medically assisted dying,” won the US Documentary Special Jury Award at its premiere at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival last week. It is the second feature from disabled filmmaker Reid Davenport, who won the 2022 Sundance Directing Award (U.S. Documentary) for I Didn’t See You There.
- For Film Comment, Devika Girish praises the film’s “keen, structural analysis of our presumptions about what a good life looks like.”
- Variety’s Murtada Elfadl calls it “an engrossing, moving and most importantly confrontational movie about the right to die and disability justice.”
- Davenport recently spoke with Documentary’s Lauren Wissot about disabled filmmaking and the film’s broader political context.

RENT THE FILM NOW with captions.
RENT THE FILM NOW with audio description.
For the next month, you can stream Life After from wherever you are.
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A portrait of an elegant white woman with one hand tenderly touching her chin. — Photo by **Ryan Slack**.

Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore also premiered in Sundance’s Documentary Competition. The Hollywood Reporter’s Leslie Felperin calls it “an engaging, exuberant portrait of the relentlessly likeable Matlin as she enters her 60s.”
- The Deaf icon and Deaf director Shoshannah Stern recently sat down with The Hollywood Reporter about the film and the “always temporary” celebration of Deaf excellence on screen.

Variety and Easterseals recently hosted a roundtable discussion with actors Autumn Best, Peter Farrelly, Marissa Bode, Amber Sealey, and Lauren “Lolo” Spencer about “Creatives With Disabilities Changing the Industry.”

New Works

Musical notes dance underneath and over abstract black lines on a white background, creating a wavy, rhythmic pattern.

Christine Sun Kim: All Day All Night opens this week at The Whitney Museum of American Art (NYC). The show, curated by Jennie Goldstein, Pavel Pyś, Tom Finkelpearl, Rose Pallone, and Brandon Eng, is the Deaf artist’s first major museum survey.

A closeup of a white wall covered in handmade pink valentine cards in the shape of hears. One of them says, out infinite capacity for love. — Photo by **Elle Rinaldi**.

Visual AIDS’ annual LOVE POSITIVE WOMEN exhibition closes today at MoMA PS1 (NYC).
Dominic Quagliozzi: Corporis Fabrica, curated by Amanda Cachia, is on view at the Helix Gallery at Thomas Jefferson University (Philadelphia) through April 4.
Autistic artist Troels Steenholdt Heiredal’s essay “Autistic Architectural Approach” was recently published in PLAT 13: Alchemy.

A blue and white sky with a yellow sun and deep blue ocean made from a mosaic of jellybean shapes outlined in grey. The sky encompasses most of the artwork with a small ribbon of ocean at the bottom. The half-sun semi-circle is shining in the top right. — “**Ocean Story with Sky and Sun Made of Jellybeans**” by **Michael Nuñez**.

How’s the Weather?, organized by Megan Bent, is on view through NIAD Art Center’s Online Gallery. Featuring works by Angela Cambell, Felicia Griffin, Karla Alfaro, Michael Nuñez, Luis Estrada, Deatra Colbert, Dorian Reid, Christian Vassell, Shawn Sanders, Karen May, and Maria Radilla.

New Honors

Disabled artist Finnegan Shannon is among the 2025 United States Artists Fellows.
6 disabled artists are among this year’s Creative Capital Awardees. The sponsored projects include Sensorium Ex, an opera that “synthesizes artificial intelligence, disability, and the arts in a groundbreaking and innovative artistic work.
Crip* artists Christopher Robert Jones & Liza Sylvestre are among the 2025 Joan Mitchell Foundation Fellows.

Not New News

The breadth of game-changing disability artistry is much wider than the shine from awards. Next week, I’ll be releasing several reports that document some work I’ve been doing to de-center merit in the movement to support individual artists.

In Other News…

40 years ago on Saturday Feb. 8, Brenda Renee Pearson became the first Black woman stenographer/court reporter to record a State of the Union address.

CALLS

A red rectangle with white color text that reads, "Ask Senators to Oppose Current Nominations for HHS and NIH."

People’s CDC has a letter template for reaching out to your Senators to opposed the nominations of RFK Jr. and Jay Bhattacharya.
People’s CDC also has a template for telling Congress to extend Medicare funding for full telehealth services beyond March 2025.
The Covid-19 Longhauler Advocacy Project is seeking a part-time Director of Digital Content & Social Media Growth and a part-time Director of Development & Major Gifts.
Applications are open for the World Institute on Disability’s Global Heumann Fellowship Program for disability leaders and advocates worldwide to advance disability rights and justice within their regional communities. Apply by Feb. 28. More here.
The 2025 Disability Atlantic Arts Symposium is seeking disability-identified artists and arts workers from across Atlantic Canada who are interested in being a part of the a three-day event in March. Apply by Feb. 18. More here.
Attitude is Everything and Parents and Carers in Performing Arts are calling for survey respondents for a new project exploring how caring responsibilities intersect with disability and working in the music industry. Submit by March 3. More here.

EVENTS

Disability Movie and Speed Dating Event

Friday, Feb. 14, 6pm ET, in-person in NYC

Disability Pop is hosting a cute little date night on Valentine's Day for a free movie screening of Patrice: The Movie followed by a (not so speedy) speed dating event.