Cinema Touching Disability Call for Entries

Cinema Touching Disability Film Festival - Call for Entries

Texas' preeminent disability film festival, Cinema Touching Disability, is announcing a call for submissions to its short film competition in conjunction with its seventh annual festival this fall.

The festival will be held October 15-16, 2010, at the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar, Austin, Texas. Directors are encouraged to visit http://www.ctdfilmfest.org/ for instructions and entry form. Entry is free, and films must include disability in some way. Short films will be judged and selected in the Emerging Division for independent and collegiate level filmmakers and in the Scholastic Division for high school and middle school students. Official Selections will be announced October 1, and all finalists will be screened at the film festival.

Cinema Touching Disability is hosted by the Coalition of Texans with Disabilities (CTD), a 32 year-old non-profit disability advocacy organization with a reputation for influencing public policy for the benefit of Texans with disabilities. This unique film festival celebrates the art of disability visibility in film and illustrates how people with disabilities lead both ordinary and extraordinary lives. The film festival will showcase an array of disability-themed festivals, including feature length films, competition official selections and other shorts.

"Traditionally, films have depicted people with disabilities as being helpless, bitter or heroic. Even as recently as Avatar, the protagonist, Jake, aspires to regain the use of his legs and escape his wheelchair, playing up the commonly held stereotype that disabilities need to be fixed or cured," said CTD Executive Director Dennis Borel.

"Cinema Touching Disability is an opportunity for filmmakers to be truly creative and explode myths about people with disabilities, to portray them as humans and all that the human experience implies."

The Cinema Touching Disability Film Festival has earned numerous awards, including being honored with Media Awards from both the Governor's Committee on People with Disabilities and the Austin Mayor's Committee for People with Disabilities.