Welcome to Alumni Live: The Podcast.

These are conversations with Grand Valley State University film and video

graduates about the industry, the film, video, major and alumni profiles.

Welcome back to Alumni Live: the Podcast.

My name is Elena Chiu, and I am a third year film and video student

interested in producing and editing.

I wanted to explore disability and accessibility in filmmaking, and through

my research, I found FWD-Doc, a worldwide community of disabled filmmakers.

They connected me with Ariel Baska, a multi award winning, multiply disabled,

queer, horror, and documentary filmmaker who hosts "Ride the Omnibus," a

podcast parked at the intersection of pop culture and social justice, and

who has also written multiple books.

Her work has played in film festivals all over the world and I'm honored

to be able to speak with her today.

Welcome, Ariel!

Thank you so much, Elena.

It's good to be here.

Could you tell us a little bit about how you got into filmmaking?

Sure.

I mean, my path was very unusual in terms of where I started and where I landed.

I actually was a Latin teacher for 15 years.

I taught Latin and theater and I was born with disabilities,

but then I also acquired a few more rare diseases along the way.

And when I got to the point where I could no longer teach, I was kind of

stuck at home in isolation for a while, not really sure what I was going to do.

And really, I was unclear where I was meant to go at this point.

And then after a year and a half of that, the pandemic hit.

And by that point, I was like, no, I absolutely know what I'm meant to do.

I'm meant to create a community because I didn't feel like I

had community at that time.

And so in the pandemic I started my podcast, "Ride the Omnibus,"

started talking to a lot of different filmmakers, and musicians, and writers.

And I realized very quickly, this is so easy.

Anyone can make a movie, obviously.

So I'll just do that, right?

I had kind of a charmed year in that, in 2021, I went on to Kickstarter.

I raised 20,000 dollars on Kickstarter, made a movie, "Our First Priority,"

about medical gaslighting, where I sent a doctor to Hell for telling

a patient it was all in her head.

And the film went on to win a lot of awards.

And it's now playing on Alaska Airlines, actually.

And, it's had kind of a charmed life as the first thing I ever did.

But it's really incredible to me that my pathway into filmmaking was so

very unusual, but it's the only way I could have done it because really,

to be a person with disabilities on a film set, you also have to be the

person who has the power to make change happen on a film set and to tell

people, "this is how it has to be."

One of the things that I'm doing a lot right now is also educating

people on how they can increase accessibility in film sets as well.

So that was how I got into it.

But, it's a little different now.

Yeah, one thing that we learn in film is nobody takes the same path and

we all just end up where we end up.

In line with "Our First Priority," were there challenges and strategies

that you considered while directing during COVID and as a person with

disabilities on making your set inclusive?

Absolutely.

So there were a lot of challenges that we faced in general.

I would say one of the biggest ones was the fact that I was

having migraines every four hours.

And so we had to learn to work completely differently.

We created a completely different workflow, one that said we couldn't work

more than an eight hour day any given day.

Part of that was also having a child actor on set because with a child

actor on set, we couldn't work more than four hours anyway at a time.

And so that meant that we structured everything very carefully.

We made sure that the timing of everything on set was structured so

that people got the shots they needed, but then could quickly move on to the

next thing and that we could maximize our time in whatever way we needed to.

One of the things that was absolutely crucial for me, was also that I was

directly talking to my actors because I am deaf in one ear and blind in one eye.

And so for me, it's really hard to communicate if you're always

communicating from video village with the people who are on set.

What was really effective was to have the actors actually come to me

between takes, and we could have a powwow about what was going on in

a given scene and what would be the most effective thing moving forward.

One of the other things that was absolutely crucial was that

everybody I worked with was completely aligned with me.

Everyone who was a part of this film had an experience with medical gaslighting.

That was really important to me that everyone from the PAs to the Gaffers

had this same experience and felt united in this story and it was so important

because I think, for a lot of people, it was their first experience working

with someone with disabilities on set, but it was also their first experience

working on a project where everybody had the same feeling about the project.

And that it was an important story to tell.

I imagine that it was helpful because everybody understood where

you were coming from, so your ideas wouldn't be compromised.

I mean, also, it didn't hurt that everybody knew that I was

going to have brain surgery right after production finished.

I was like, "No, this is do or die, people.

We got to get this done because I could die on the operating table.

You never know.

" I wasn't too maudlin about it, but it was a thing.

Wow.

How did you balance taking elements of your own experience and also creating

a character that was separate from you?

To a certain extent, it was easy because I have so many stories from so

many people I know over the years who have experienced medical gaslighting

in some form or fashion and have been told repeatedly by doctors

that, there's nothing really wrong.

The test shows up as normal.

So what you're experiencing can't really be real.

Because I have known so many people who've had similar experiences, it was very easy

to delineate a world where it's based somewhat on my experience, but it goes

beyond that to try to create something a little more universal and a little

more well rounded, I would say, in terms of both a critique of the health care

system that creates these circumstances, where doctors don't have the time

and the energy to actually explore what's really going on with someone.

And so they take the easiest way out, which is to say, "Oh, it's your anxiety.

Oh, it's your depression."

And just stop there.

Yeah.

So, I saw that you're working on a film called "Shining in the Dark," about a

blind projectionist who starts to see images of her dead daughter, and your

slides were really interesting when I was looking at the cinematography.

Would you be willing to talk about that and how you were cinematically

representing your character's disability?

Absolutely.

So, "Shining in the Dark is a project I've been trying to get made for a while.

It's been hard to raise the funds to make it happen.

But one of the things that was most intriguing to me about this

particular project was looking at how blindness is represented on film.

For me, because I'm blind in one eye, people are constantly asking

me, like, "Okay, so what do you actually see out of your blind eye?"

Because the thing that we see represented in media, almost always,

is that people who are blind have no vision, and that there is absolute

darkness, which is not at all the case.

There is an absolute spectrum of vision that people experience and there are

so many different places along that continuum where you could experience

anything from light and color to shadow.

It's really interesting to me to envision a different kind of world of sight.

It's much more interesting to think about not just necessarily blurring

out everything, or creating darkness, but creating color and light in

unusual ways and having an interesting interplay between the world of reality

and unreality and hallucination, combined with disability in this

sort of nebulous way that feels more creative and more powerful.

I would love to see that.

I think it's so interesting.

Is it a horror?

Yes, it's a horror film.

So how do you navigate the complex relationship of horror and disability,

since horror in particular, disability has been used as like, "oh, it's

scary and it's bad and it's evil?"

Well, one of the things that, for me, when you think about the horror tropes

that have been so awful for disability over the years, you think of characters

like Michael Myers, who are always portrayed as, he escaped from an asylum

and he is the villain that we all have to fear, and then, there's been a very

palpable effect that's come from these solo villains like Michael Myers,

making people afraid of anyone with mental health problems, for example.

The thing about that is that we're afraid of the solo villain.

It's really important for us to, in worlds of horror, not necessarily have

one person with a disability on screen and have only that person be the villain.

My feeling is that we can change this trope in really meaningful ways by

creating worlds in which there are multiple characters with disabilities,

not all of whom are the villain.

It seems It's like a very easy solution when over 26 percent of

American adults have a disability.

You would expect to see more than one in four characters on screen

to have a disability, but in reality, it's less than 2 percent.

And It's absolutely astonishing when you go into it even further and you notice

that 95 percent of that 2 percent are played by actors without a disability.

When you're looking at authentic representation, I really feel like the

way forward for horror, as well as for pretty much any genre, is to make sure

that you have accurate representation of people with disabilities, but then

also make sure that your writing, your directing, your below-the-line crew,

all have people with disabilities incorporated as well, because you're not

going to have a well fleshed out world of disability and of people with disabilities

unless you're actually exploring it from a variety of different angles.

One of the other things that for me, in horror specifically, the thing I'm

always fighting against is so much of the time, the disability, the disfigurement,

the thing that is different about you is the thing that makes you a monster.

Whereas I like to play with that and make ableism the monster.

The feeling of, "You must be this way because you look this way," and

playing instead with a different way of looking at things that inverts

the usual is what I like to do.

I like to subvert the trope as much as possible.

That leads me right into my next question.

You write on your website that you "make work to question the status quo

that asks people to re-evaluate their own perspective and look at the world

through a different set of eyes."

Can you talk about why that's important?

For me, I first started "Ride the Omnibus" specifically to look at underrepresented

perspectives in any way I possibly could, whether that was talking to

friends who were from different kinds of communities, whether they were Indigenous

or Black communities, or if they were immigrants, or other people with other

underrepresented perspectives that you don't see anywhere near as often.

Part of this is my background as a theater and a Latin teacher, but I feel like

it's always been that our strongest asset is really our ability to empathize with

other people, and our ability to see from other people's perspectives, to walk a

mile in other people's shoes is always going to be where we are actually our

most human, and where we can activate what we really can do as a society.

In a time of so much division and so much hatred over so many issues, the world

over, I really feel that this is the most important thing we can focus on right now.

Yeah.

And a podcast and film, they're great ways to do that.

I know that a lot of my friends are so passionate about just connecting with

other people and film is how they do that.

What is your favorite part of making Ride the Omnibus?"

The fact that I have been able to talk to so many incredibly

passionate people the world over.

I mean, it's, powerful getting to talk to Oscar winners and Nobel Peace Prize

nominees and all of these things, but ultimately it's all just about connection.

And really making a connection with someone else who's very passionate

about a piece of work they've created.

I think there's something really powerful in that connection to just

share a love of this one piece of work.

Because I only ever air the episodes that are about the pieces of work that I love.

So it's very sincere when I share that something really resonated with me.

I'm only sharing the pieces of work that I feel passionately

need to be out there in the world.

That's a great way to do that, just sharing what you love.

We're taking a short break to tell you about the Dirk Koning

Memorial Film and Video scholarship.

Here's Gretchen Vinnedge remembering Dirk Koning.

The Koning Scholarship enables students to get that kind of an education, to be

a good filmmaker, to be able to express their voice and to continue Dirk's dream.

For more information, and to donate to the scholarship, visit

the link in the description.

Now, back to the show.

Could you talk about your experience with FWD-Doc and

documentary filmmaking in general?

FWD-Doc is a really powerful group.

And FWD-Doc stands for Filmmakers With Disabilities dash Documentary.

But honestly, the filmmakers who are a part of FWD-Doc really do a lot of

different things beyond documentary.

There are a lot of narrative filmmakers in there as well.

FWD-Doc does a really great job of advocating for people with disabilities in

front of the camera and behind the camera.

And really has been at the forefront of a lot of different kinds of initiatives

to help people see themselves on screen.

And make sure that we are actually working toward a more inclusive future in film.

FWD-Doc has a really great toolkit online for inclusion in film sets.

They also have worked with FEAW to create the Access Scorecard for film event

accessibility, which is an initiative I've been working with a little bit and I, just

deeply appreciate as a filmmaker because one of the biggest impediments in the

film industry is trying to get your work shown in film festivals, and if the film

festival itself is not accessible to you, that means there are so many connections

that you can never actually make, if you can't physically be there to show

your work and to talk about your work.

FWD-Doc for me personally, has given me a community that I can really be a

part of, and that means a lot to me and to many others in the world of film.

We have so many resources now that can be relied upon for not only getting more

information about what's out there, as well as how we can improve our lives

through what we're doing and sharing those resources with other people.

It's so powerful to have all of those opportunities.

I was looking at the Access Scorecard.

I thought it was really interesting because as someone who doesn't have

a physical disability, I had never considered something like that.

So that was really interesting just to get me thinking about it even.

Absolutely.

And you don't even have to have a physical disability.

There are so many people who can benefit from things like sensory spaces,

to just have a place to go that's quiet and away from everything else.

There are so many things that are talked about in that scorecard that go

beyond the things that you think of, like captioning and audio description.

Those are great, but they're not the be all end all because there are so many

other things to take into consideration.

Hopefully people are able to see that and actually make a difference.

What are your hopes for that?

What's the best case scenario for accessibility in film in the future?

Whew.

The best case scenario for me, is that we actually have more than

equal representation on-screen going forward, and that film festivals

become increasingly accessible.

I'm not going to say 100 percent accessible, because there is no such

thing, really, because you'll always have some degree of access friction,

but if you just work toward improvement every year with what you're doing,

whether it's on set, whether it's in the film festival space, whatever

space you're in, you should just work toward improvement every year, however

you can, with whatever you're doing.

Has there been any recent increases in accessibility that you've

noticed, or even decreases?

Well, there have been a lot of decreases in accessibility, unfortunately

particularly now that people are moving away from online access because they

feel like the pandemic is no longer an issue, which I'm here to tell

you it's still very much an issue.

But one of the things that we've noticed a lot is that film festivals

that really invest in captioning.

Captioning has become a little more de rigueur in the last year

or so than it ever has been before.

We've noticed that people who include captions on social media posts are

more likely to have more engagement.

And as a result, a lot of festivals have taken to incorporating captions

more often, and those are things that I think everyone can agree on actually

do improve your experience of content.

Not everyone loves captions.

A lot of people want the ability to turn them off sometimes, but honestly, the

people who need them really need them.

And it seems like Gen Z And younger all really want captions all the time

from what we can tell in the data.

Why not provide that?

It seems like a no brainer to me.

I totally agree, and you're definitely right on the Gen Z thing.

So many people my age, we put captions on.

Do we necessarily need them?

No, we can get by without them, but a lot of us just like it so much better.

It makes complete sense because it's giving your brain another

way to process the information.

Exactly, and that way if characters have an accent, or even if we just

miss a word, we can still make sense of what's happening in the scene.

And I know for Instagram videos, sometimes I'll watch them on silent in public,

so having captions is a way to still understand what's going on without having

to turn my volume up or find my earbuds.

Exactly.

Could you expand a little bit on how the pandemic is still an issue

for people with disabilities?

Absolutely.

So for me, for example, I don't have a suppressed immune system, but I have a

lot of friends who are immunosuppressed.

And so, as a result, I can't interact with them unless I've been masking

very diligently and very carefully every time I've been out in the world.

One of the things that I think a lot of people take for granted is the fact

that we've had this sort of return to normalcy, but meanwhile, COVID

numbers are still through the roof.

At this stage, in the winter months where we know COVID tends to spike

quite a bit after Thanksgiving.

And we also know that most hospitals are at capacity and so for those of

us with immune systems that are not as strong, it's always going to be

a problem to actually receive the care that we need when we need it.

And so, one of the things that I think people generally heard over and over

again in the pandemic was that the lives of the disabled were not really worthy.

They heard this by saying, "Oh, the only people who will be affected are

the elderly or the immunosuppressed or people in nursing homes."

And through repeated communication of that only those people would be affected.

We also heard coded in that that our lives were not worthy

compared to everyone else's.

And so when you're telling more than a quarter of the population

that their lives are not worthwhile, that ultimately is a huge problem.

Additionally, in this day and age, we're still dealing with a lot of the fallout

from that because so many people died, so many people have long COVID now and

are still really trying to deal with the fallout from everything that has

been going on for the last three years.

Right, yeah.

What advice do you have for current filmmakers who are disabled and

current filmmakers who aren't?

Well, my biggest piece of advice for current filmmakers that are

disabled is to just make movies.

Just get your work out there however you can.

Push.

It's hard, but you can create new ways of doing old things.

And one of the things that's most important is to connect with other

people who are doing the same things.

So join groups like FWD-Doc.

There are also groups out there like RespectAbility that are helping where

they can to push the representation of disability in the media.

And I think it's so important for people without disabilities to

really be supporting people with disabilities, however, they can in

their work as well, either by making sure that they're actually hiring

people with disabilities so that they have a representative cast and crew.

Making sure that they have accessibility written into what they're doing as

well, because one of the things that we know is that not everybody with a

disability has a visible disability.

And so it's really important to bake accessibility into what you're

doing on set as well, so that everyone can be comfortable and that

your processes can include everyone.

Absolutely.

I would say, as producer, I have food allergies, so I always make sure to

ask my crew and my cast if they have any dietary restrictions when planning

out all of our meals, because I know that people need to eat on set, and

I don't want anybody to be left out.

That's so important, and that's certainly one example of how

you can improve that on set.

How do you go about making sure that your accessibility needs are met on a set?

So far, the biggest thing is making sure that there is one point person who I

can approach about accommodations, who is not the director and is not someone

who has the ability to fire me on set if they don't like what they hear.

One of the things that I think is so important is to have an

access coordinator, just one person who is responsible for

saying, "We have these needs on set that need to be taken care of.

And this is how we're going to do it."

And as long as there is one point person that I can talk to you about

accommodations I can always kind of negotiate for what I need with that

person without too much difficulty at all.

And so it's really important, I think, to always have the ability to talk

to someone who is a third party and is not biased in one way or another

to say, "Oh, we can't do that."

but they're actually focused on specifically helping however they can.

Yeah, that's a great point.

Are there any specific things that you might want small filmmakers to know?

Because right now, in school, we're usually in crews of six.

So, we're pretty small, we're pretty low budget.

But what are things that we could do, like captioning, that we could

do relatively easy that can make our films and our sets more accessible?

Absolutely.

So I would say with everyone, whoever you are is to start where you are.

Start by trying to make things accessible in small ways.

But also make sure that you're making it accessible for the team that you have.

One of the things that I think a lot of people get hung up on

is, "well, if I can't make my set completely accessible, why even try?"

But what you can always do is try to make it accessible for the crew

that you have and the crew that you want to have on a project.

One of the easiest ways to do that is to appoint one person in charge of

collecting any access requests, et cetera.

So if someone is sensitive to fluorescent lights, for example, because it might

cause them migraines or headaches, you can just look at a way of restructuring

so that you have the lights off and you have alternative lighting

sources instead for some of the time.

Or alternatively, when it comes to food allergies and so forth, you

could have alternative foods available from crafty when you need that.

There are all kinds of different things you can do, but one of the things

that I really love to do is, always incorporating an access check before

any event on set of any kind where you actually go through and ask people,

just point blank, "do you have any needs that we have not covered here so far?"

"This is where you go for a sensory free space if you need some kind of

time away from what's going on on set.

This is where you go if something happens emergency-wise.

Access checks are so incredibly important to safety as well as accessibility.

And I think that's such a really important thing to incorporate.

I'm definitely going to be putting that on my list to make sure that I'm checking

with everybody on things like that.

Is there anything else you would want our listeners to know

about accessibility in film?

The most important thing is that the willingness comes before anything else.

So the willingness to change, really, is where everything comes from.

It doesn't come from money.

A lot of people have this inaccurate perception that you have to have

money to provide accessibility, and that's not really true.

You just have to have willingness to try and to do things a little differently.

I would argue, pretty much always, that the most important thing is

just having the drive to change things, to make things better.

Awesome.

So at the end of our episodes, we like to do a shout out.

Is there anything you want to talk about?

Anything you're proud of, anything that's upcoming?

Oh, absolutely.

So I'm currently working on a documentary called "Monstrous Me," that is about my

relationship with cinematic monsters.

The work sample that's specifically about my relationship with

Freddy Krueger is out there now.

I love creating this and it's so important to me.

But I also want to say, one of my favorite cinematic monsters of all

time is also out on screens right now and I just want to give a shout

out to Emerald Fennell's "Saltburn," which I have now watched twice on the

big screen and I think it's fabulous.

It looks interesting.

I saw the trailer and I put it on my list to see.

It's a brilliant film.

Well, thank you, Ariel, so much for talking with us.

It was great to have you.

Oh, well, thank you so much for having me, Elena.

It was lovely to meet you.

I wish you good luck in your filmmaking career.

Thank you, and you as well.

Thank you for joining us for this episode of Alumni Live: The Podcast.

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