“We are smart, intelligent, loving people who just want to
be treated like everyone else.” ~ Joanie Crowley
Crowley, a woman with intellectual disAbilities who attended last year's Spout Film Festival in Nashville, is well aware of the chasm in media in regards to people with disAbilities. Says Crowley: "It's important for the general population to see people
with disabilities in movies and TV shows because most people
don't see us as regular people.”
For the second subsequent year, the ARC of Davidson County and the ARC of Williamson County are hosting the Sprout Film Festival, a Nashville-based film event in which people with disAbilities are the stars and sometimes the creators of the films.
This year's event takes place on Friday, Nov. 1, from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. at the W.O. Smith School of Music. Ticket sales benefit the two sponsoring organizations which provide support, education and advocacy
for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and their families
in Middle Tennessee. Tickets are $40 per person. Sales and event details are
available at www.SproutNashville.Eventbrite.com.
The festival features a variety of film shorts, which were selected by a committee
including volunteers from The Arc Davidson County, Nashville Film Festival,
and Watkins College of Art. One of the nine short films on the festival roster is Be My Brother, an 8-minute short about a charming and
charismatic young man with Down syndrome who challenges the prejudices of a
stranger at a bus stop. The film won the top prize in Australia's TropFest Film
Festival in 2009. The festival also features The Other Child, a 13-
minute documentary, by talented Nashville filmmaker Jon Kent, which examines the unique
window brothers and sisters have into each other's world when one of the
siblings has autism.
This year, Metro Nashville Public School students with and without disAbilities will be offered a free daytime screening of the festival, offering students a chance to examine and discuss what inclusion for people with disAbilities means for them.
Joanie will be at the Sprout Film Festival again this year. Will you?
