By Loredana Militello
And so, it’s time to reflect of the screenings I was able to watch at the Reelabilities Festival, held in New York City, from April 3rd to the 9th. I was so looking forward to being able to participate in person to this event, I even imagined going to multiple locations with different companions…but the reality was, instead, a tight work schedule, and a series of duties that just did not allow me to go in person. I was very happy to have the option to watch some of the movies from home, so I did not have to embark on a journey of multiple metro trains and or buses to get to the destination. I wish the streaming option was available for all the programmed movies and documentaries, but it was not. So, with my “festival companion”, who was also very interested in this festival (I am not sure if he genuinely was or was just exhausted from my multiple reminders to attend…), we watched a whole load of trailers to decide to which dedicate our time. After filtering for streaming availability, we ended up picking the documentary “Blind A.F.”, even though we were somehow unsure because of the too enthusiastic trailer (we make a bittersweet companionship at times). “Blind A.F” is an 87-minute documentary directed by Gina LeVay and starred by Shawn Cheshire, a woman who is many things: a veteran, a retired paramedic, an athlete, a paralympic champion, and a blind person. The documentary though follows her in 2021 during an incredible journey as a blind biker, going for a 3,600-mile cross-country bike journey on a single, non-tandem bicycle. As I mentioned before, after watching the trailer, we were cynical about this cinematic product: there was this constant accent on her immense courage and resilience as a person that became blind at the age of 36 and did not accept to live her life with limitations of any sort. We turned our heads at each other, and we raised our eyebrows: a clear signal of skepticism. But nonetheless we decided to watch the whole film. And that was a good decision: it was a case of “gift wrap not matching the gift itself” (yes, I came up with it). What we were exposed to was much more than “simply” another story of overcoming for a blind person; it was not the usual “if you want it, you get it”. Shawn starts telling her story, the part that is intuitive about her blindness: she was a veteran, and she decided to go back to school to become a paramedic. During a paramedical intervention, while dealing with an agitated patient in the ambulance, she is kicked out and she suffers a brain injury that results in her complete vision loss. After that, she goes into months of physical rehabilitation, adaptation sports learning and PTSD informed healing. She then starts to compete, on high levels, and she participates in the Rio Paralympics in 2016, where she wins multiple medals biking in tandem. But she keeps saying this phrase “I didn’t want to feel stuck”. So, because of that, she embarks in this hard to imagine journey to cross the U.S. on a single bike. Sure, she has a whole team helping her, biking by her side, but ultimately it is her and her bike, relying heavily on sounds and the voice of her guide-biker. While the journey unfolds, we discover many other details of Shawn’s life, and we start to understand that this is not about overcoming blindness. Shawn is an abuse “survivor”: she was completely and heavily neglected by her mother, and, because of that, she went to live with her grandmother from the age of 13. She then ended up establishing a very abusing relationship with a guy that she married and had two kids with and who was constantly abusing and threatening her. Until she felt that she could not bear it anymore and she left. But, as we dived even deeper, we found her having a conversation with her half-sister, who was abused by her father and Shawn remembers that the same thing happened to her. This part was extremely dramatic, and I could not believe such an intimate space was shared with no filters. But I don’t want to judge this: maybe it was somehow cathartic for the protagonist, maybe it is helpful for some of the victims of domestic abuse, but it certainly hit me right in my guts. This is when we understand that blindness is not the whole story: she is trying to overcome something else that has more to do with trauma due to her abuse as a child.
The documentary was somewhat different than we expected by only watching the trailer and it proved to be a “gift that did not match the wrapping paper”. It also promoted a conversation between me and my “watching partner” (for convenience we will call him S.). He said that “sometimes the thing that is the source of torment for someone, becomes an inspiration for someone else”. I found this true: probably many people have felt inspired by this documentary, but what we are really watching is Shawn’s attempt to silence her interior torment, that is not due to her newly acquired blindness more than the abuses she suffered in her childhood and young adulthood. In fact, S., as a blind person himself, acutely noticed that for him watching a blind person biking all the way across the U.S is not a replacement for the experience that he is losing. For him, he explained to me, biking is to relax to enjoy the panorama while on two wheels. But for Shawn, biking meant a constant sense of fear and terror and a necessity to constantly concentrate on the goal of not getting hit by a car passing by. “For herself it is a freakshow”. So, it may not be necessarily inspiring for other blind people, but maybe for sighted people that do not question their beliefs.
While watching the trailer, we could not help but think of “Code of the freaks” and how it criticizes the overcoming urgency that many movies with a disabled character have. But then, the documentary was not necessarily pushing that idea of overcoming at any cost, and that let S.’s and mine eyebrows down.
We also get to watch a short movie, “Millstone”, directed by Peter Hoffman Kimball long only 15 minutes. The movie features a cast of three actors, all of whom are deaf. The first thing I want to say (and in this I must admit my ableism) is that, for the whole 15 minutes I was expecting something that had to do with deafness. All actors are not only talking in sign language, but it is a couple therapy session. Intense talk. So, my mind decided that the movie had to do with something related to deafness…but it is not. I think this was my biggest lesson learned during this festival. The movie is not about deafness, it is a thriller where a deaf psychotherapist plays the evil character, “even if he is blond and deaf”. I think the unease that I felt was due to my expectations mixed with a scary plot. I really enjoyed this one.
Works cited:
Code of the Freaks. Directed by Salome Chasnoff, performances by Alyson
Patsavas, Mike Ervin, and Ann Finger, Kartemquin Films, 2020.
“Blind A.F.” Directed by Gina LeVay, starring Shawn Cheshire, 2024. ReelAbilities Streaming, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0uoH_aqKvQ
“Millstone”. Directed by Peter Hoffman Kimball, starring Bellamie Bachleda, Eddie Buck, Daniel Durant, Dont’ Matter Media, 2023.
