A festival showcasing films about Deaf and disabled communities is returning to Toronto this week.
First launched in 2016, ReelAbilities Film Festival Toronto opens tonight, with virtual screenings and in-person events scheduled to take place until the celebratory awards ceremony on May 19.
This year’s festival includes 22 films, 50 per cent of which are Canadian.
“The most beautiful process of any film festival is getting to watch the films and seeing the themes that arise every year,” said RAFFTO artistic director Lora Campbell in an interview. “This year, we found there were so many films about interdependency, and what it looks like to be in community in that way. And so we created a program about that.
“With the rest of my colleagues, I’m really all about programs that build our community members as artists themselves,” Campbell added.
One featured artist this year is Canadian filmmaker Michael McNeely, whose documentary “Advocacy Club” explores life for deaf-blind individuals at the Canadian Helen Keller Centre in the heart of Toronto. Outside of filmmaking, McNeely, who is deaf-blind himself, is also a lawyer and accessibility consultant.
“There’s a tendency for people not to understand what it means to be deaf-blind,” McNeely told CP24 in an interview. “I’ve come across people who are surprised that I’m still alive, or that I have a life, that I’ve been able to do what I’ve been able to do.
“I hope the conversation continues with other movies about the deaf-blind experience. I think it’s important that people understand there are many different ways of enjoying life. People can be different and still enjoy their life,” he added.
The Canadian Helen Keller Centre offers deaf-blind individuals in Toronto a space for community, advocacy and collaboration in order to promote awareness of deaf-blindness and reduce isolation for those who might feel lonely in their day-to-day lives. One piece of support the centre offers is intervenor services, which connect members of the deaf-blind community with someone who is professionally trained to process auditory and visual information on behalf of another person.
“The biggest misconception about deaf-blind people is that we cannot be successful,” said McNeely. “That we can’t be mentors, or lawyers, or husbands and wives, boyfriends and girlfriends, parents. That we can’t achieve our dreams or even have dreams in the first place,” he added.
Something McNeely didn’t expect when he began making “Advocacy Club” was the wealth of advice he’d receive from the clients at the centre of the film.
“They all had great advice for me in terms of living my life in terms of going forward with dignity and purpose,” he said. “It was a very personal experience for me to realize other people have gone through the same thing I have. Even though we’re all different, we have a commonality of experience.”
“There are so many incredible films this year,” said Campbell. “This is the first year of me being the artistic director of a film festival dedicated to disabled and Deaf folks. The ideas coming forward are deep, and interesting, and show the breadth of rich lives of these filmmakers that a lot of people don’t really understand.”
