Documentary film: Code of the Freaks, #1

The film is available for digital download or DVD and was donated by Carrie Sandahl, a member of the creative team (along with Salome Chasnoff, Susan Nussbaum and Alyson Patsavas) of the film.

Code of the Freaks, a feature-length documentary, is a radical reframing of the use of disabled characters in film. From The Fake Beggar (1895), Of Mice and Men (1939) and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane (1962) to more contemporary films like Million Dollar Baby, Forrest Gump, Avatar, Fences and Me Before You, Hollywood continues to crank out all the old disability clichés and hollow inspirational narratives – what disability activists call “inspiration [filtered word]” – that have served so well for more than a century. Code of the Freaks (the title is a line from Tod Browning’s 1932 classic Freaks) counters these formulaic entertainments with a powerful corrective: it dares to imagine a cinematic landscape that takes disabled people seriously. 

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