CRIP CAMP
Congratulations to Jim LeBrecht (director/producer) and Sara Bolder (producer) whose groundbreaking directorial debut Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution has been nominated for best feature film and best director. Crip Camp reflects on a summer camp located close to Woodstock, which galvanized a group of teens with disabilities, becoming activists who would take the Country by storm, forging a path that has made the world a more equal place for everyone. LeBrecht and Bolder have been a longtime friends to SDFF, with LeBrecht designing sound, composing and scoring more of our films than we can possibly count. Crip Camp is available to stream right now on Netflix, check out the trailer here.
HUNTSVILLE STATION
Congratulations to Jaime Meltzer and Chris Filippone, whose film Huntsville Station is up for Best Short. Huntsville Station is a meditative look at a moment of major transition as inmates released from Texas State Penitentiary encounter the small pleasures of everyday life waiting for the bus. Meltzer’s film Informant won SDFF’s jury prize in 2012. We also highly recommend True Conviction, which speaks to the present moment. See Huntsville Station here.
THE REASON I JUMP
Kudos to director Jerry Rothwell whose film The Reason I Jump won the 2020 Sundance World Cinema Documentary Audience Award. A cinematic adaptation of a book written by 13 year-old Naoki Higashida, it seeks to create an immersive experience evocative of the lived experiences of nonspeaking autistic people. The film fuses Higashida’s insights with intimate portraits of 5 exceptional young people, each of whom experiences reality in a remarkably different way. The film evokes Rothwell’s early film and SDFF 2009 audience sneaker hit, Heavy Load, about a group of people with learning disabilities who start a punk band. Rothwell’s Sour Grapes (2017) and How To Change The World (2016) have also graced SDFF’s screens.