When you begin watching Crip Camp it inspires the sorts of inspiration porn feelings one gets when watching media about children with disabilities and you think this is going to be that sort of film that uses the experience of disabled people to make average people feel good. But the title should have given something away. This film is more subversive of that. It starts out lulling you into that sort of sensibility only to tell a very different story.
The filmmakers follow this group of young people, whose first taste of community, of belonging was forged in a camp made for and made by people with disabilities, into their adulthood where they not only transformed their own lives from what their society deemed was appropriate for them, but they transformed their nation. This group of people ended up becoming activists who fought to advance civil rights legislation and were quite successful.
Crip Camp explores the intersections of marginalization in how the disabled activists find themselves allying themselves with queer and racialized activists as well, coming to see how the struggled overlap. As Crip Camp moves forward through its archival footage format and modern interviews, we come to see the connection between how young people finding a place where they can be truly who they are and build the connections of community can lead to creating a different world for them as adults.
Crip Camp
Writers/Directors: Nicole Newnham, James Lebrecht
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