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Home / Documentaries / Request for participants for a documentary

Request for participants for a documentary

Written by Sean on Wednesday, February 27, 2008

On a fairly regular basis, I am contacted to help find participants for documentaries on BIID. I tend to just pass on the word and let you guys decide what you’ll do. So here’s another request for participants for a documentary. The difference with this one is that the guy in charge is aiming specifically at filming people who use a wheelchair when dealing with their BIID.

It is really a refreshing change, considering so many of the people researching BIID for documentary continue the amputee-centric approach. I was recently approached about another group for documentary participants. As it happens, this particular documentary has gone as far as filming, they found a participant. But I hear through the grapevine that they have ommitted discussion of any non-amputee BIID. This is both disapointing and angering, considering how much time was spent explaining the issues to them. In any case, this latest request was refreshing on that topic.

I do not know if anything will come out of it. In the last two years, I must have dealt with at least two dozens people working on documentaries. I have spent many hours emailing back and forth with them. In the end, nothing ever comes out of it. But it is worth a try.

Joel Wilson from Elevenfilm is looking for two or three individuals who use wheelchairs as part of their daily lives, as part of dealing with BIID. He has said:

We aren’t in production yet, but are very keen to make a film about transabled people. We are not interested so much in amputee wanabees, but more in pretenders who live their public lives as a wheelchair user because they feel an overpowering need to be (or at least live their lives as) a paraplegic.

And:

As a company and as film-makers, we have made a wide variety of films, from serious, hard hitting documentaries to scripted comedy. We¹ve worked for the BBC and Channel 4 in the UK and are currently working on a feature length documentary with Julie Goldman, the executive producer of “In the Shadow of the Moon”

It looks as if they aren’t new to the industry and might have a clue or two. But then, even reputable outfits sometimes end up doing what’s expedient for them.

So, ok, I know I appear quite negative. I guess I am just weary of it all. I somehow doubt that anyone will come forward to participate in the documentary either. And frankly, I don’t blame them. I certainly am not willing to risk it all for a documentary. It might be difference if I hadn’t been living as a whelchair user for so long. But I have.

Joel also says:

Excellent films have been made featuring people “coming out” in similarly sensitive situations, and I hope that with your help, I can make a film which follows someone with BIID as they come out to, and are accepted by, their friends.

Yes, some excellent "coming out" films have been made, but I also think that it is a little bit naïve to think that friends will automatically accept. Some friends might just shrug it off, but it is my experience, and that of many people, that most people are not quite that accepting. I’m not sure what it is about disability, but it’s really creating nasty knee-jerk reaction in people.

Plus, as I alluded to a little earlier in this post, the risk to those of us who are living full time (or even most of the time) as wheelchair users is pretty big. There’s risk to us - potential accusations of fraud (even if we’re not fraudulent), potential relationship break down, potential loss of employment, the list goes on. Then there’s risk for the disability community as well. I have accomplished a lot of stuff with disability rights advocacy. I could well imagine where my coming out might undo some of what was accomplished, just because I was a "pretender" at the time.

I would welcome the right person coming out, and making for an interesting documentary. But I fear that no one is going to be willing and ready to do it. If you think you might want to, please do contact Joel Wilson (email link above).

Tags: Documentary, BIID, Amputee