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Hi, thank you. Priscilla Lopez, who played the mother. Laverne ***, who played Chantelle.
Is Edgar here? Edgar is our dance instructor. We have Matthew Clark,
Thank you for joining us. Come on guys, if anyone else is here... Anita?
Not to take away from our objectivity, but
Anita also happens to be on our selections committee. Send her the check!
Did I miss anybody? Cloe, Cloe is behind the scenes, organizing
all of our events.
Is that everybody?
Well we have half the cast up here.
Thank you all, thank you all for coming out.
This film is just a fabulous part of the festival,
it's a New York story as well, and I think that
ReelAbilities is a bit of a New York story.
Maybe you could share a little bit, we can start with you
and you could share a little bit about the origins?
I have another choreographer here, Leo Garcia, where are you?
Okay, sorry about that.
At least now we know we will have
a good dance party later.
So maybe you could first give us a little information about the origins of this film and how it was made.
Oh lord.
Well it's kind of a long story, but I'll try to make it brief.
I had an idea, I worked on it.
I hired somebody to write it.
I waited around until somebody
saw what I saw. I found that person.
His name is Joey and he is in LA today,
working on the other end of the country.
So we started working on it,
and then I realized
that this was in some way
a hard sell, I figured
that I would
do it myself.
So we started a year ago
in January,
and here we are.
Bravo!
When is this going to be released in theaters? When can they tell their friends to watch it?
In New York,
and Miami,
it will be on March 23rd,
and in LA and Chicago, March 30th.
So you could go from NY to Miami and then to LA and Chicago.
One of the most amazing things about this film is that there is an inclusion of the cast
of people with disabilities, which is rare to see.
Maybe some of the participants who took on this role could
tell us a little about their experience as far as
getting to the film, how you
found out about the film process.
I'm Anita and I was very excited
when I heard
about this happening,
and it's not just about performing with disabilities,
but it's also about diversity in general.
Our whole cast is so diverse
on so many levels.
I happen to be an advocate about performances with disabilities,
I'm the National East Coast Chair of Performance with Disabilities for SAG
and AFTRA, and I'm an active member.
We just finished a campaign called
"I am PWD"
Inclusion in the arts and Media, for people with disabilities.
and
we worked so hard,
when this came along I just thought,
this is great.
They have gone further than
most films had,
to include all of us,
and to make sure that it's accurate,
and that there's access, accuracy and inclusion.
Which are the three things that we've been trying to work so *** at "I am PWD"
And it was actually from my pilates buddy,
and during pilates that he said,
"you should know about this"
And I knew Susan Seidelman because of a musical that she was working on that I was singing demos for.
So I wrote her an email, asking if she needed any help, consulting,
or if there is anything I could do
to help, I'd be really happy to.
And she wrote back and said,
"Well we want you to be in it."
So that was really great. I wasn't expecting that.
I'm so proud of this, I've seen it so many times.
It's such a great movie. It isn't just a "disabled film,"
it is so many things. But I'll stop talking now.
Hi, my name is Matthew Clark. I've been wheelchair ballroom dancing
for about six years now on and off.
One of my former partners, is the third choreographer here, Harvey.
She was in the pink during the competition.
And when she got the gig, she was like oh whoa I can't believe
all of this is possible.
When I heard about this possibility I looked for all my friends in New York,
to see whose couch I could stay on,
and yea, it was quite a workshop.
A week to teach people how to wheelchair ballroom dance
A lot of them have never used chairs before.
For me,
it was easy
of course.
It was great,
and it is something that
I believe in so much. Thank you.
There are a couple of questions from me,
I'd like to ask the other actors
how they were trained especially for the dancing,
what kind of preparation did you have to go through?
Well that would be me.
Thanks everyone for coming.
The actors that were involved in this film, we actually had about five weeks
of rehearsals and it was very
challenging and amazing.
It was an incredible experience. I have a dance background, I've been dancing since I was a kid, but I never studied ballroom dancing.
Especially never ballroom dancing in a wheelchair.
It was a wonderful challenge.
Getting to be a part of the film,
and getting to work with her every day,
she taught me so much about
strength
and courage
and she's just an amazing person.
Now a question for the non dancing actors, were you jealous of the dancers? Did you want to get out there and dance?
For me to dance, well we did at the party.
We just relied on our
latin roots and let it flow.
Somebody pointed out to me that your legs
I think, are the opening shot of the film.
I noticed a lot of shots of your legs in the film.
Do you think that it is a statement
of the film?
Well yes. No, I didn't
even realized that.
But I guess you're right. Oh I'm thrilled!
I'd like to take some questions from the audience as well.
How many wheelchair users were there, that were really disabled? -Three.
there were three.
As far as the dancers go.
You know Matt, and Auti was the plumpy girl.
As far as the dancers go.
That's too many.
What?
That's not too many.
Well we had the basket ball team.
We had a mixture.
And unfortunately,
this was,
we had a
time constraint
to be able to go out to disabled dancers
and actors
and we were in a certain time frame.
If you look at
the dance floor,
we had six couples on the dance floor.
Three of which were truly disabled.
So in the whole picture,
I think we did pretty good.
It was a challenge, I must say, because
we were very sensitive and concerned the whole time
on how we were
going to be
perceived.
And to acknowledge and to give due respect
to every person
in our film,
because it was really about diversity.
The Latino culture, the Gay and Lesbian, the disabled,
and even the dancers needed to be represented properly.
So it was, well I had a few headaches,
thinking, what the hell am I doing?
I think in retrospect, what this was for us as a cast and a crew,
behind the scenes and in front of the camera,
was an education.
Everyone was educated within the scope
of this movie to the sensitivity, to
the challenges, the things that we as a whole body take for granted.
I incorporated a lot of those concerns when I was working on the script.
The simple things you know, the cabinets are too high,
the bathrooms too narrow,
you dropped your lipstick, who is going to get it?
A lot of things. Would someone fall in love?
It's a love story. It's just
that people are people.
I was hoping, and the intension of this film,
was to open everybody's eyes and hearts
and to just accept everyone.
Because diversity is really what's going to make us all
survive.
I'd like to ask you some questions
about the shooting of the last scene.
I was troubled by the fact that many times
we saw people from the neck up or from the
shoulders up.
I felt like the film didn't trust the dancing
and didn't trust the
disabled dancers.
There were many times that I saw
more of the standing dancers
than of the seated
dancers.
Many times the camera angle favored those
standing dancers because it was shooting down on them,
making the wheelchair users the objects of the camera.
That troubled me. I wondered about the decisions of that.
I didn't feel that so much in the rehearsals, but in the performance, in the contest.
Can I answer this? Does anybody want to answer this?
I have to say,
I was there on the set, from
morning until night, every single day.
And with this particular scene, with these scenes that you're talking about
it took us hours, it took us three full days, of over 12 hour days,
filming, and making, and trying to
get the dance,
and to the best of circumstances,
to whoever is out there dancing,
to get the look,
this is a film,
it is a story.
There is some imagination, some fantasy involved.
I'm really sorry if it has affected anybody to feel as if somehow
intentionally, they were not being
presented
properly.
It was more
for the film
to be theatrical,
to have that aspect of it.
It was not meant
to be
a
documentary.
It was meant to be a story, to open up peoples hearts and minds
and eyes to think of all of this diversity differently.
No stereotypes, no nothing.
Just to be people trying to
have a happy life.
That last scene, it's a bit of a fairy tale,
it really has that glamorized look to it. The angles and the way it was shot really added on to that scene
almost as if it's a dream sequence in some way.
I think it adds to the atmosphere of the film. Let's take two more questions.
I have to first say that I have a little Aphasia.
And that I'm so excited of what I saw in this performance.
I thought wow, you're going to be very successful in your message. And because of my Aphasia, just want to mention that I have my disabilities, I had something similar to a stroke, but when I see the perspective,
when I met Anita, so you're from Brooklyn..
we're all from different places.
This was just the best.
The excitement of the performance,
as a Hispanic person, as a person with disabilities,
the issue of addressing, not just the issue of disability, it's a combination as you mentioned, but the color of the skin,
you have this, you have that,
but the excitement that I felt, the salsa, well I want to dance now.
Excellent.
I applaud all of you.
My respect.
There are not enough Jews in the film. What? I said, there are not enough Jews in the film!
I'm Jewish!! I'm Jewish!!
What about the waltz? That covered a couple of bases. The final song for the waltz is a famous Israeli song called Eliptos.
You could now get accepted to virtually every film festival.
Okay we are going to take one more question from this side.
Hi
Thanks every body for the film,
it was really great.
My question is, I don't know if you intentionally raised
stereotypes in the movie, like
the stereotype of
women with disabilities
it was kind of
reenforced and
not necessarily challenged. For example,
when the one man who was disabled,
who got injured from the war,
said "oh are you going to have chicks there, real chicks"
So that was one thing, the idea that women with disabilities aren't full women.
Another comment was about the mother
and the date,
the person that she was dating, and the talk
about if they could have children and all that stuff.
I just want to know if that was intentional, because those are
real stereotypes that exist about women with disabilities.
So did you do it to raise awareness about it?
Because it's not really explicit,
I know about it, because I studied it,
but if you're just a regular audience member,
there was no explicit message. So I was just wondering if you were trying to do that,
or was it something that just happened?
My character is the one that has that issue about
worrying about her son and about what his life will be like.
I think, not to think about
it in stereotypes, but as
an education.
Because eventually, the mother does come around
to realize that it's about
relationships
and I think that the message of this movie is love.
Love of all types
and all people.
Stereotypes are stereotypes because
sometimes,
they're true. That's why they're stereotypes.
This is movie. And when you deal with something, you show it.
You show people being in the middle of it and not realizing it
It educates the audience to recognize and say oh, really? She feels that way? Doesn't she realize
that there's more to this than that?
I think that if all, or even, what was the character's name?
Roses partner?
Kenny.
Yes, Kenny,
the one from the war.
The one who is saying, where are the chicks?
He is just a human being,
with his own trips or whatever.
And we're going into his world and seeing what he is dealing with. We all deal with different things in our lives.
I think that whether it is viewed as
stereotypical
or not, it's all lessons.
We all have lessons to learn. We all have a lot to learn
not only from this movie, but in everything that we come across in life.
Hopefully,
it will be a
learning experience rather than an experience
of setting up stereotypes.
It's something to spark discussion as well.
For me as an artist, sometimes it's just important to have the questions asked.
I think it's fantastic that you bring that point up, because this is something
that we can talk about, and sort of bring to life, about people with disabilities and the misconceptions
and the stereotypes.
Sometimes it's
enough to get the
discussion
started, the conversation started.
I just wanted to follow about,
particularly about the comment that Kenny made, about the "real chicks, not chicks in wheelchairs"
When I first read the script, I was like ugh, but then
I realized,
I know a lot of *** that think that way.
He says it himself.
And so I think that, yea that went through.
So I can't really complain that they put
that in there.
Cause again, everyone knows that Kenny is kind of an ***.
I think that it's interesting.
It's like an insight into building
knowledge about this culture.
Cause you guys know guys that play sports that think this way too.
It's kind of interesting to see that perspective.
I just want to say that ReelAbilities tries to
present sides of a community that are not
featured enough in films,
that we do not get to see enough in the public
And we put them in the spotlight here, and on our screen, and bring them to these audiences here,
and people get to see a reality.
Often television and movies depict a certain reality that sometimes unfortunately doesn't completely represent.
A film like this film really shows the diversity of the life in our community, so thank you all so much for doing this for us.
Please everybody join us in the lobby.
Those of you that want to exit,
there is an exit through the back.