Disability Studies

(2019) An intimate, profoundly human look at families raising children society deems “abnormal.” Tracing their joys, challenges, tragedies, and triumphs, FAR FROM THE TREE invites viewers to rethink what it means to be a “normal family.”

(2008) Includes THE SKIN HORSE, 1983, which focuses on the Outsiders Club, a dating agency for disabled people. Samson deconstructs popular imagery of the handicapped to show how they are either abused or patronized, challenging assumptions about what is normal and abnormal.

(1999) Mohammad joyfully returns to his tiny village on summer vacation from the Institute for the Blind, unaware of his father's intentions to disown him. Engaged to be married, the widowed man has kept Mohammad a secret from his fiancé, certain the boy's disability will destroy his only chance for happiness.

(1996) Poet-journalist Mark O'Brien was stricken with polio in childhood and has spent most of his life in an iron lung. He describes how he has fought against illness and bureaucracy for his right to lead an independent life and offers his reflections on work, sex, death, and God.

(1991) When a North Korean soldier is blinded in an explosion, he is abandoned by his girlfriend, who comes to regret her decision when he marries another woman. As part of her repentance, his former paramour devotes her life to the North Korean socialist revolution.

(1988) LOVE TAPES are personal, cathartic statements that illustrate the video camera's role as mirror, witness and voyeur, a vehicle for direct confrontation with the self. Series 18 represents a cross-section of contemporary American culture: from prison inmates and disabled veterans to lovesick adolescents.

(1986) MULTI-HANDICAPPED shows the day to day activities of multi-handicapped and sensory impaired students and their teachers, dormitory parents, and counselors at the Helen Keller School, the primary mission of which is to meet the total and living needs of deaf and/or blind children, some of whom also have other disabilities.

(1979 / 1998) BEST BOY follows Philly Wohl, a cheerful and lovable 52 year-old who's been mentally handicapped since birth and still lives with his parents. When his cousin, filmmaker Ira Wohl, questions what will happen to Philly once his elderly parents can no longer care for him, the family embarks on a mission to help Philly become more independent. BEST MAN revisits Philly 20 years later.

(1975) Ten-year-old orphan Mary comes to live on a lonely estate on the Yorkshire moors and discovers an invalid cousin and the mysteries of a locked garden.

(1972) In 1971, filmmaker Peter Robinson and a small crew lived in R.D. Laing's controversial Archway Community. This film documents their stay in the mental health facility where schizophrenics attempted to live communally and peacefully as they tried to heal their "selves" according to Laing's philosophy.

(1932) A group of "circus freaks" take revenge on a trapeze artist and her boyfriend after years of abuse. Numerous critics have suggested that the film presents a starkly sympathetic portrait of its sideshow characters rather than an exploitative one, with Andrew Sarris declaring FREAKS one of the "most compassionate" films ever made.