Screenwriter Tony Spiridakis wasn’t familiar with the Museum of the Moving Image’s Marvels of Media Festival — which celebrates the work of mediamakers with autism — before penning his star-studded film Ezra, about parenting a child on the spectrum. But he quickly became a supporter after MoM founder and former AMC Networks CEO Josh Sapan reached out.
“[The Queens-based festival] understands the power of empathy and the undeniable beauty of diversity,” says Spiridakis, who now sits on its advisory board alongside Ezra director Tony Goldwyn, as he addressed attendees Thursday night at the opening of its third annual edition. “It shows the unfiltered, authentic expression that comes from the unique perspectives of autistic mediamakers, something Hollywood and all artists can benefit from.”
Marvels of Media, taking place until tomorrow in Queens, joins the ReelAbilities Film Festival, which runs April 3 through 10, and is hosting Ezra’s New York premiere on opening night. Both of the film festivals are dedicated to disabled filmmakers and narratives showcasing characters with a disability. “A lot of these films do not get the attention they deserve because Hollywood feels that [such a film] is unmarketable, or that it’s doing things differently. But it’s the opposite. It’s doing things differently, and that’s why it’s marketable,” says ReelAbilities co-founder Isaac Zablocki.
While autism, along with deafness and cerebral palsy, tends to be featured more frequently in film and TV than other disabilities, according to Zablocki, it still makes up a scant number of the total narratives in mainstream Hollywood, which has a long history of misrepresenting neurodivergence through dehumanizing stereotypes. That’s partly a byproduct of the disabled and neurodivergent community rarely being extended creative opportunities or space within the film industry, including the festival circuit, to tell…
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