Slamdance has for some years had a commitment to including films from or about disabled people. The festival sets aside a special section for them to compete in. Films here include narrative and documentary. Here are the winners from this year’s “Unstoppable” films.
The Grand Jury Prize in this section went to Racewalkers, directed by Phil Moniz and Kevin Claydon. Will would love to compete in the somewhat obscure sport of racewalking. (Yes, it is a real sport that is part of the Olympics.) Will’s diminutive size means he’d never be able to keep up. But he has studied everything about it and thinks he’d be the perfect coach. However, the racewalking organization is controlled by a pompous, egotistical former walker (he won bronze medals in the 90s) who is grooming his equally pompous son to be the next big thing.
Matt is a washed-out baseball player (noted as one of the biggest busts ever). When Will sees the way Matt walks while chasing a dog, he deems him a natural. The two team up to win a place in the Olympics. It all becomes fairly predictable, including a love interest for Will that could have been explored a bit more). The characters are played pretty broadly, but overall, it is an enjoyable story that makes it clear that people can do more than many people think they can.
The Grand Jury gave Honorable Mention to Disposable Humanity, directed by Cameron S. Mitchell. The film also won the Audience Award. The filmmaker’s father is a disabilities scholar (and disabled himself) who has studied the extermination of disabled people by Nazi under the Aktion T4 program. The filmmaker’s family travels through the Nazi occupied territories to visit some of the hospitals and other facilities that were part of that program. For the Nazis, these people represented “life unworthy of life.”
The records of those murdered in this program are not as well-documented as those of the concentration camps. It may reflect the assumption that disabled people were less than real human beings, and so would not be missed. There are now many memorials at these sites for the victims. Because the disabled were the first to be killed by Nazi eugenic programs, Aktion T4 was in some ways a precursor to the larger Holocaust.
