FIGHT THE POWER:

CHAINED FOR LIFE (2018)

INCL. PANEL TALK

For this edition of Fight the Power, we are screening Aaron Schimberg’s Chained for Life (2018), a darkly comic film about representation, authorship and who gets to shape the stories cinema tells about us. From the characters we see on screen to the people behind the camera, representation is as much about who gets to tell a story as who gets to be part of it.

In Chained for Life, Hollywood actress Mabel takes the lead role in a horror film directed by an eccentric European auteur and starring actors with physical differences. She plays a blind woman opposite Rosenthal, a comedian with a facial difference, and as their relationship develops both on and off screen, the boundaries between the film being made and the world around it begin to blur. With surreal humour and an unconventional approach to filmmaking, Schimberg explores how cinema shapes our ideas of beauty, normality and identity, while making room for the people so often reduced to supporting roles in someone else’s story.

Following the screening, we bring together museologist and disabled humourist Sem I. Bannenberg and screenwriter and director Sam Dijkstra to discuss who gets to shape the stories told about disability, both on screen and beyond it. Drawing on their work in art and film, the conversation explores how familiar portrayals can be challenged, how people can move from being the subjects of other people’s stories to becoming the storytellers themselves, and what it takes to gain greater control over your own representation.

About the speakers

Sem I. Bannenberg (he/him) is a museologist and art historian. Bannenberg has presented research on the Embodiment Model of Disability and its representation in Contemporary (Disability) Art. Additionally he works as a disabled humourist, and in his artistic practice he focuses on disability and social stigma. Additionally he is a general board member of the NGO for dutch disabled history Kreukelcollectief

Sam Dijkstra (he/him) is a screenwriter and director. His debut short Sea Legs played at the Reelabilities Film Festival in New York, one of the most influential film festivals regarding disability. His debut feature film as a screenwriter, First Zone, will be released in Dutch cinemas from the 14th of january after a critically acclaimed world premiere at the 79th Edinburgh International Film Festival.