When Ariel Baska traded her 15-year career teaching Latin for the film industry, they were instantly faced with a series of unexpected guardrails. Access: Horror aims to provide access and representation to people with disabilities behind and in front of the camera. The organization brings awareness to how disability is portrayed in film while also making movies more accessible by adding content warnings, captions and audio descriptions.
The festival runs online from Oct. 4 to Nov. 1 with a large slate of films from emerging filmmakers, as well as a series of panels and filmmaker Q&As. Baska and co-director Heather Petrocelli focused their festival on the horror genre because of the fact that “ableism” and “disabled and disfigured bodies have been at the heart of horror from the beginning.” The lineup is separated into three blocks of programming: Edibles, The Body Keeps the Score and Dead Darlings. Among the titles featured in this year’s festival is Lee Cleaveland’s “Everhand,” where a one-armed farmer orders a mysterious machine, and he and his wife must face off with a company rep in order to reclaim their humanity.
Another is Charlie Gillette’s “Tal,” which translates to ‘mask’ in English, which is a claustrophobic meditation on immigrant identity and familial expectations. Petrocelli and Baska’s goal in curating the festival lineup was to find films that align with their mission and reclaim disability’s role in the genre. There’s a beating heart to horror.
There’s a frequency that horror nerds are attuned to that no one else is.” By giving a voice to novice filmmakers, they also ensure their goals of making films more accessible are heard.
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