This edited collection of contributions from media scholars, film practitioners and film historians connects the vibrant fields of documentary and disability studies. Documentary film has not only played an historical role in the social construction of disability but continues to be a strong force for expression, inclusion and activism. Offering essays on the interpretation and conception of a wide variety of documentary formats, Documentary and Disability reveals a rich set of resources on subjects as diverse as Thomas Quasthoff's opera performances, Tourette syndrome in the developing world, queer approaches to sexual functionality, Channel 4 disability sports broadcasting, the political meaning of cochlear implant activation, and Christoph's Schlingensief's celebrated Freakstars 3000.
1. Introduction: The Bricolage of Documentary and Disability (Catalin Brylla, Helen Hughes).- 2. Part One: Film Practice - Chapter 2: Not Without Us - Collaborating Across Difference in Documentary Filmmaking (Samuel Avery).- 3. Visual Psychological Anthropology and the Lived Experience of Disability (Annie Tucker, Robert Lemelson).- 4. Valorising Disability on Screen: When did 'Inspirational' Become a Dirty Word? (Veronica Wain).- 5. Spectatorship and Alternative Portrayals of Blindness (Catalin Brylla.- 6. Aberrancy and Autobiographical Documentary (Phoebe Hart).- 7. Part Two: Representation - Chapter 7: Thomas Quasthoff and the Performativity of Disability in Michael Harder's The Dreamer (Anna Drum, Martin Brady).- 8. Rethinking Ability and Disability in the Work of Johan van der Keuken (Hing Tsang).- 9. (Dis)abling the Spectator: Embodying Disability Experience in Animated Documentary (Slava Greenberg).- 10. The Poetics of Touch: Mediating the Reality of Deafblindness in Planetof Snail (Anne-Marie Callus).- 11. Sexual Dissidence and Crip Empowerment in Yes, We Fuck! (Andrea García-Santesmases).- 12. Part Three: Identity, Participation and Exhibition - Chapter 12: Accessing Alternative Ethical Maps of In(ter)depenent Living in Global Disability Documentary (David T. Mitchell, Sharon L. Snyder).- 13. Interface Productions and Disability Programming for Channel 4: 1984 - 1986 (Tony Steyger, Jamie Clarke).- 14. Disability and the Para-TV Communities of Reality Television (Anita Biressi).- 15. Singing Altogether Now: Unsettling Images of Disability and Experimental Filmic Practices (Robert Stock).- 16. To Document is to Preserve: Moving Pictures and Sign Language (Magdalena Zdrodowska).- 17. Documenting Neuropolitics: Cochlear Implant Activation Videos (Beate Ochsner).- 18. On Andrew Kötting's Mapping Perception (Helen Hughes).
