Excerpts from films featuring actors with disabilities are featured in an Independent Lens blog titled “The Evolution of Disability in Film: After the Accolades the Work Continues”. From an 1897 film featuring a paraplegic beggar who wears a sign proclaiming he is blind but who runs away then the police arrive (recaptured in the recent film Trading Places), to a depiction of people using tactile sign on a plane ride in Werner Herzog’s Land of Silence and Darkness (1971) to modern documentaries, this cross-disability blog is worth a read.
In February, Independent Lens showed a seven-part mini-doc series about four young blind people looking to date and find a serious relationship. In episode three, Simon, who says he has never held a girl’s hand, goes with friends to a local bar to learn how to meet people. Watch now.
