
A new short film is exploring the ways digital meetings amid the pandemic has changed the way we make and perceive first impressions about disability and wheelchair users. âFull Pictureâ embarks on a social experiment where actress and writer Santina Muha meets multiple people for the first time on a video call â but thereâs something the people on the other end canât see at first â Muha uses a wheelchair.
Muha explained that since the pandemic took many of her interactions with others online, people donât initially see she uses a wheelchair. âFull Pictureâ shows what Muha suspected would happen from the start â most people were surprised to learn Muha has a disability.
âI had a fun conversation with a friendâs roommate and we just got along,â Muha told The Mighty. âThen a week later, he was watching a movie and I was in the movie. And he was like, âWait a minute, is that the girl I was talking to?â ⦠He just couldnât believe it.â
Muha worked on the film with director Jacob Reed, as well as writers and producers Stephen Sanow and Elizabeth Reichelt. The inspiration for âFull Pictureâ was born when the team was given the prompt to make a documentary as part of a film challenge â something the group had never done before.
âAnd weâre like, âOh, OK. Well, how are we going to make this fun and funny?ââ said Muha. She then suggested gathering a fresh group of people who had never met her before to see what kind of impression she made before learning she uses a wheelchair. Then, the filmmakers told each group of people about Muhaâs disability and brought her back into the chat again.
The experience of meeting Muha onscreen without seeing her wheelchair right away challenged people to confront their stereotypes about people with disabilities. And the film shows how people often changed their perceptions â but some more than others. Kids for example, didnât have much to say about it.
âEvery time we talked to a kid, it didnât faze them at all,â Reed told The Mighty.
For Muha, she found that most people had a tendency to see her accomplishments as greater once they learned she had a disability. âItâs like, âOh, youâre an actress in a wheelchair,'â she said. âEverything is filtered through that lens and it makes everything I do either seem more extraordinary or more inspirational or something.â
But in the end, Muha learned a bit about her own biases too. She said all her life people have described her as strong and a go-getter â attributes she thought people only applied to her because she uses a wheelchair. The experiment taught her, however, those attributes were often the first impression people had of her without knowing about her disability.
You can watch âFull Pictureâ at this yearâs virtual Slamdance Film Festival through Feb. 25. For more information you can visit the festivalâs website here and watch the trailer below.
source https://www.programage.com/news/Short_Film__Full_Picture__Experiments_With_First_Impressions_About_Wheelchair_Users_1614180631527975.html
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