Seeing in the Dark: Film Festival Celebrates Disability

BAY AREA REPORTER -- For three decades, the international disability film festival Superfest, which this year is being co-presented by the Paul K. Longmore Institute on Disability at San Francisco State University and the Lighthouse for the Blind San Francisco, has given both emerging and established filmmakers a place to present edgy and new perspectives on disability on the silver screen. Superfest will bestow the following honors: best of festival (short), best of festival (feature), the P.K. Walker Innovation in Craft Award, advocacy award, disability justice award, Liane Yasumoto Judges' Choice Award and "The Dissie" — an award that is given to a disability snub film. "A disability snub film celebrates the message that if you're living with a disability, you're better off dead," said Emily Smith Beitiks, associate director of the Paul K. Longmore Institute at SFSU.