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  • Federico Guzmán (AKA Fiko) has become an iconic figure in Western Sahara, utilizing the platform art offers as a vehicle to promote peace and social change to the Saharawi people. Guzmán treads between a soldier of solidarity and curator of cultures emphasizing on gatherings, art, and experiences that will induce an exchange of ideas and collaborations between artists and wherever his projects realize, and the local community.

    For twelve years Guzmán has co-organized ARTifariti The Arts and Human Rights Encounters of Western Sahara in the African desert “as a way to explain the circumstances of the Saharawi people ” creating a “weapon of visibility” to a story not globally known by many nor should be hidden from the public eye: and with projects such as ARTifariti one sees the opportunity to include foreign narratives and artists distanced by unfavorable political circumstances into the art world”.

    The selected artists demonstrate couth in human rights and its relevance within the arts, but more importantly “are confronted a reality” that is life-changing from personal to professional, receiving a surreal cultural exchange with fresh perspectives and resilient power from the Sahawari people (especially from the matriarch figure whose role is to lead the community).

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    La Piedad Saharaui. Takbar Hadi y su hijo Haidala Mohamed Lamin (The Sahrawi Madonna. Takbar Hadi and her Son Haidala Mohamed Lamin). 2016. Mixed media / canvas. 200 x 200 cm. Fiko 2017.

    During 2018’s visitation in the Sahara, the artists delve into intense creative processes of art-making, finally exhibiting and documenting the work(s). Collaborations are accessible on the list of actions to accomplish plus participating in workshops, lectures, talks, and classes that take place in the refugee camps and in the Liberated Zone.

    This year Una Poesia Hecha por Todos (A Poem Made By All) marks a special edition of ARTifariti, making it the first for the artist to reside in the homes of nomadic families.

    I asked Guzmán a few questions on his artistic endeavors, interest in the Western Sahara region and predictions on a change in the future.

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    Concert by Pililli Narbona and Ballena Gurumbé at Tuiza, The Cultures of the Bedouine Tent. Crystal Palace of the Retiro Park, Madrid. MNCARS. Fiko 2015.

    BB: Hello Fiko, how’s it going?

    F: Salam Aailekum Beláxis (may peace be with you). I am doing great, and specially excited with this year’s edition of the Arts and Human Rights Festival, because we are coming back to Tifariti, in the deep Saharan desert, where the Festival was born twelve years ago. Since then, ARTifariti has become a collective action against the Moroccan “Wall of Shame”, a 2,800 Km. armed berm that fractures Western Sahara in two, separating Saharawi families between occupation and exile. These encounters are a tool to reclaim the rights of individuals and peoples to their land, their culture, their roots and their freedom. ARTifariti is an international meeting of artists, activists and social scientists that opens up a space of struggle for the realization of human rights through artistic practices.

    BB: What was the source of inspiration to this year’s edition Una Poesia Hecha por Todos? Were you reading any classic novels or another manuscript that may have influenced the direction or title?

    F: First of all, poetry –together with music– is the main art form of this nomadic people. As an oral tradition that does not depend on artifacts to carry its message, poetry has had a strong stream of expression that is followed today by The Generation of Friendship: Saharawi poets in the diaspora, writing in Hasaniya and Spanish, who “intend to convey the suffering of their people, united by stories of shepherds who got lost chasing their dreams behind a cloud”. Some of them are Sukeina Aali-Taleb, Alí Salem Iselmu, Limam Boisha, Mohamed Alí Alí- Salem, Bahia Mahmud Awah and Zahara Hasnaui. “Some times desires / are as inmense / as the throbs / of this empty specter”, the poem “How to Atract the Rain” by Limam Boisha.  On the other hand, A Poem Made By All refers to the innate collaborative nature of the Encounters. In the short days that international artists share their experience with the Saharawi people there is a strong commitment to solidaritiy and collective co-creation. This attitude is inspired by the traditional concept of the “Tuiza” in the bedouin society. In Hassaniya Tuiza means solidarity collective work: coming together, participating and building something jointly. Therefore, Tuiza is the essence of this project as a space for hospitality and conversation between cultures, workshops and other collective activities that take place during the Festival period.
    We should be aware that since ancient times, Sahrawi women have enjoyed great recognition in the tribes. It was based on the social awareness that their work is very heavy and necessary for the life of the community. The education of girls meant a great emphasis on tasks that involve specialization: different types of fabric weaving, building long strips of camel wool for the manufacture of jaimas and food preparation. Women were also responsible for transporting water and gathering firewood; they also took care of the goats and milk the camels. Women get together in a Tuiza and it is a moment of celebration, of sharing the news around the camps, and also the space where important political decisions for the community are taken. That is why this “collective work” is one of the pilars of the life in the desert.
    Finally, A Poem Made By All will be the resulting document that compiles all the works and interventions of the participating artists in ARTifariti 2018, that will be delivered in hand to the Special Rapporteur on the Field of Cultural Rights of the United Nations in Geneva, Ms. Karima Bennoune. So she can have a firsthand account of a people that is struggling with the peaceful weapons of art, culture and education to bring about their right for self determination for Western Sahara, the only colony in Africa that never got its independence.

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    La tierra nuestra casa (Earth Our Home). Painted steel, 200 x 600 x 600 cm. Wilaya of Smara. Saharawi refugee camps near Tindouf, Algeria. Fiko 2011.

    BB: When were you first exposed to the Sahawaris? Did you meet someone during an exhibition, or perhaps when you were traveling that informed you on the problematics, or is this a familiar narrative because the Spanish have had strong ties with the Sahawari people?

    F: I vaguely remember being twelve years old and hearing on TV about the “Green March”, the Moroccan military invasion that annexed the Spanish ex-province. They were explaining that Spanish troops were giving over the territory to Morocco with an honorable withdrawal of the Spanish army. Obviously, a lie and an absolute atrocity. But I didn’t understand then the dimensions of this calamity. Since then, I never studied this regretful part of our colonial history in my Spanish school nor in universitiy. There is a planified shroud of media silence over this tragic conflict that stands as the most shameful and catastrophic disaster in recent Spanish history.

    Many years later, I met Fernando Peraita, the president of the Asociation of Friendship With the Sahrawi People of Seville. Fernando is an extraordinary person. Engineer as a profession, visionary activist as his passion in life. He was a conscript doing his military service in Laayoune in the moment of the Spanish withdrawal from the territory. He witnessed the carnage inflicted on what he considered friends and compatriots. Back in Spain, he became the mastermind behind the creation of an arts festival in the desert. No one in the art world would be crazy enough to undertake such an improbable commitment. He always tells me with a wide smile: “we did it, because we didn’t know it was impossible”.

    When I first arrived in the Saharawi refugee camps I learned that Western Sahara is the last remaining colony in Africa. After the withdrawal of Spain in 1975, neighboring Morocco illegally invaded the country, forcing its indigenous population, to live under occupation or face exile. Since then, the Saharawi people have been divided between two lands. Those living in the area bordering the Atlantic Ocean, which Polisario—the internationally recognized political representative of the Saharawi people in their struggle for independence— labels the “Occupied Zone,” endure an occupation violently imposed on them by the Moroccan government. There, Sahrawis live under constant threat of imprisonment and torture, with no UN Human Rights mandate in place. Meanwhile Morocco and its international allies plunder the land’s abundant natural resources of fish, phosphates, and oil.

    BB: I am aware that many Spanish families (as well as from other countries such as Cuba, France, Algeria & Libya) have provided housing and support to the Sahawari people for educational advancements. Tell me how these interactions/exchanges have enriched the communities in Spain.

    F: Yes, the exchange program Vacaciones en Paz has brought to Spain for more than thirty years thousands of young Saharawis between the ages of 8 and 12. The children learn Spanish, receive education, medical revisions and treatments, enjoy a nice weather and the comfort of hospitable Spanish families, away from the unbearable burning temperatures of the desert summer. On the other hand, it is the Spanish families and children who receive a lesson on human values –that in our societies have almost forgotten– from the young Saharwis. We could comfidently affirm that Vacaciones en Paz, with all the direct relation and communication between Spanish and Saharawi families has done much more for the transformation of the conflict that all the diplomatic negotiations held in the political sphere.

    BB: How has your relationship to the Sahawaris and their culture affected your work? In 2015 Bedouin Tent was exhibited at Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. The work was smaller- scale reflection of what takes place in the Sahara during ARTifariti, which is quite lovely. Do you think your love and support to the Sahwari’s evolved your work to a new height, like an epiphany? It’s apparent that your comprehension of space and dynamics is prevalent in your current manifestations. It’s smashing! Bedouin Tent traveled through time and space, granting the viewer to participate in a setting that otherwise would be lost in one’s mind because they don’t have the opportunity to visit the Sahrawi community and feel that place and time in the world.

    F: Definetely it’s been much more than a personal, artistic and political transformation. I have had many conversations and learnt about what life is like. I have spoken with people who fought in the war, others who crossed the desert while napalm bombs dropped around them, and family members who had their loved ones disappeared by Moroccan security forces. The most disturbing stories, however, were told by the younger generation who know nothing other than a life lived as a refugee. While humbled by their fortitude, I am appalled that the international community allows children to be born into a life where, there is no sense of home or future, only a life spent in purgatory.

    BB: The name ARTifariti birthed from Tifariti: the region that divides the Sahawari from the Moroccan wall, an area swarmed with land-mines. Just the thought of this stresses me out. I can’t fathom peace of mind knowing a person is a few kilometers away from an explosion. How safe are the Sahwari’s from this area? I am impressed by their resilience and bravery. Was the name ARTiFariti a way to commemorate the history of Tifariti?

    F: Yes, you have to understand that, traditionally, Tifariti was a crossing point of the caravans that wandered the desert. On the day that the UN inforced a ceasefire between Morocco and the Polisario, Morocco intentionally and brutally bombed the area with napalm and white phosporous, destroying all infrastructure and leaving no stone standing in Tifariti. Since then, this place has become a sort of “Guernika” for the Saharawis: a memorial emblem of violence and also of the resistance and freedom of a people. It is considered as a sort of “capital” of the Free Territories. There were enough geopolitical and emotional reasons to choose this precise place to hold a festival for peace, and for global human rights.

    BB: Now that it has been twelve years, what does it look like for the Sahawari people’s declaration of independence? Do you think ARTifariti is facilitating their quest and do you believe ARTifariti could exist as a traveling exhibition with the United Nations?

    F: The message at the core of ARTifariti’s ethos is PEACE, HUMAN RIGHTS and SELF-DETERMINATION, believing that Art can be a tool in developing a people’s international presence and domestic well being just as much as those NGOs that provide material and infrastructural aid. As the 2012 open call for participants to the VI ARTifariti festival presented it: ARTifariti is a working context in which artistic practices play a provocative, reflective and transformative role. The focus is the Sahara conflict, but from here expands into other territories, questioning any situation where individual and collective human rights are violated. ARTifariti is an appointment with artistic practices as a tool to vindicate Human Rights; the right of the people to their land, their culture, their roots and their freedom. It is an annual encounter of public art to reflect on creation, politics and society, and a point of contact for artists interested in the capacity of art to question and transform reality. ARTifariti also aims to promote intercultural relations, fomenting the interchange of experiences and skills between local artists and artists from other parts of the world in order to contribute to the international widespread coverage of the Saharawi reality. It provides a reflection point from the world of Art and Culture through direct knowledge and promotes the development of the Saharawi people through their Cultural Heritage. The festival is also seen by Saharawis as an assertion of their sovereignty over their country: it is a means of re-appropriation, even if it is undertaken mainly by foreign artists, as a kind or re-appropriation by proxy. ARTifariti is also seen as reinforcing a Hispanic-Arab culture that undoubtedly makes Saharawis unique, and feel unique, within the Arab world. As the Commander of the SPLA in the Tifariti region put it: ARTifariti is a means of exercising sovereignty over our territory [and] the liberated territory, besides contributing to the preservation of our national identity and our Spanish-Arabic culture. It is the foundation stone of a road that can only lead to freedom.

    BB: What’s next for us globally Fiko? How can we trickle the right social change in society? The one where people will take responsibility to have the discipline and commitment to change themselves, not the other. We have a significant burden on our shoulders, but it’s an excellent one.

    F: You are right. We are in the Century of the Big Transformation. We have in our hands the enormous challenge and historic opportunity to change the dream of the planet. I have the hypothesis that our human species is unconsciously willing its own collapse to force a jump into a higher level of planetary consciousness. The Saharawi conflict is not a problem of “a few poor victims far away in a corner of Africa”. It is the extreme expression of the dysfunctional way in which the patriarchal colonial matrix forces life in our societies. I don’t think we will transform conflict from the same level of consciousness in which it was created. We have to transcend as a human family that is intrinsically part of the body of the loving super organism that is Mother Earth. A new world will have to be degrowing, self-managed, anti-patriarchal and internationalist. Or it won’t be.

    Written by Beláxis Buil

    Edited by Abel Folgar

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  • Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures

    Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures

    Denmark’s official entry for Best Foreign Language Film, The Guilty is as suspenseful as they come. Gustav Möller’s dark, spare thriller opens in an emergency dispatch center and never leaves the premises. Most of the action takes place on the phone as Asger Holm (Jakob Cedergren), a cop demoted to desk duty, tries desperately to save a life. It’s a testament to Möller’s abilities that this claustrophobic, no-frills film never loses steam, but continues to grip the viewer throughout its 85-minute runtime.

    Right from the start, the focus is tight on Asger as he gruffly handles mundane, almost amusing, emergency calls—someone freaking out on drugs, a guy who was mugged by a prostitute. Just when the bored cop begins to space out, there’s a call from a woman in distress. As he quickly ascertains that she is being held in a moving car against her will, the film’s tension immediately ratchets up.

    Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures

    Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures

    The woman pretends she’s speaking with her child as Asger asks a series of questions to figure out her location. His mind spinning with possibilities, he embarks on a series of frantic calls, which include sending a patrol car to a location indicated by her phone’s GPS. He also calls the woman’s home and speaks to her panicked six-year-old, promising the girl that he’ll protect her mother. Keeping his calm at first, Asger skillfully unravels the situation while constantly being told by various entities that it’s not his job. There’s talk about a big case coming up the next day, along with references to a psychiatrist; we wonder what he’s done.

    As horrific details emerge, Asger moves into another room to continue working on the case, enlisting his partner, his commanding officer, whomever he can send to do something. Occasionally, he goes into a fugue-like state until the phone or a co-worker snaps him out of it. Then there’s a brutal twist that neither Asger nor the viewer sees coming. The film’s protagonist shifts into shocked despair, but he doesn’t stop trying, eventually coming clean with his own demons.

    The Guilty is quite a thrill ride, all the more remarkable for its lack of onscreen action. At its center, Cedergren — filmed mostly in tight close-up — is solid and convincing as a compromised law enforcement professional determined to save the day.

    Courtesy of Oscilloscope Laboratories

    Courtesy of Oscilloscope Laboratories

    Alexandria Bombach’s documentary On Her Shoulders is a moving portrait of 2018 Nobel Peace Prize Winner Nadia Murad. A survivor of the ISIS-inflicted Yazidi genocide in northern Iraq, Murad is an intensely sympathetic young woman, but she’s far from pathetic. After escaping sexual slavery at the hands of ISIS when the terrorist group took over her village and killed most of her family, Nadia could not forget the women and girls still imprisoned. Bombach’s film follows her and the Yazda Organization’s executive director Murad Ismael as they travel to Canada, Greece, Germany and ultimately, the U.S., drumming up support for their cause: making the genocide a priority for the UN.

    As Nadia gives speeches and interviews with journalists and public officials, she suffers in reliving the horrific details of her ordeal, but she keeps going, all the way to the UN General Assembly. A revered figure in the decimated Yazidi community, she’s clearly under tremendous pressure, but conducts herself with admirable grace, enduring inane comments and small talk by well-meaning supporters and politicians. Bombach’s film shows the loneliness, isolation and exhaustion of a reluctant activist whose overarching goal somehow enables her to deal with her memories and current strange reality.

    Courtesy of Menemsha Films

    Courtesy of Menemsha Films

    The UN is also present in Ruth Beckermann’s The Waldheim Waltz, a lively documentary about the rise to power of former UN Secretary General and Austrian President Kurt Waldheim, despite evidence of his Nazi past. Using recently discovered footage that she shot in the ’80s, along with news reports and other clips, Beckermann recreates the controversy leading up to the 1986 Austrian presidential election, when the World Jewish Congress led accusations that Waldheim was involved in the 1943 deportation of 60,000 Greek Jews. During his presidential campaign, Waldheim maintained that he was just following orders as “an honest soldier” in the German Army. Despite outward expressions of anti-Nazi sentiment, much of Austria chose to believe him or—as the film shows—just overlook this aspect of his career. The Waldheim Waltz reveals a fascinating and shameful time in the history of a world leader and his country.

    The Guilty, On Her Shoulders and The Waldheim Waltz all open in NYC on Friday, October 19.

    Marina Zogbi

     

  • Art for Progress (AFP) is thrilled and honored to present a night of empowering original music, created for a special evening to benefit AFP’s art education programs. Music for Progress will take place on Friday November 30th at NYC’s quintessential listening room, Rockwood Music Hall (stage 2) and feature psychedelic world-jam group Toubab Krewe, Brooklyn power trio Bad Faces, and 3Bridge Records and Flemcy Music recording artist and DJ, Gatto.  Get your tickets [HERE]

    Blending American and West African influences into a sound all its own, Toubab Krewe has set “a new standard for fusions of rock ‘n’ roll and West African music” (Afro pop Worldwide). Since forming in 2005, the magnetic Asheville, NC based quintet has won a diverse and devoted following while performing everywhere from Bonnaroo to the Festival of the Desert in Essakane, Mali. Mixing American rock with the musical traditions the band fell in love with on their travels to Africa, their sound also nods to surf and zydeco. This fusion of sound is what the Village Voice describes as “a futuristic, psychedelic, neo-griot frenzy” and Honest Tune hails as “one of the most innovative voices in music today.”

    Bad Faces are a Brooklyn power trio as deeply rooted in American traditional music as they are reaching for new stratospheric heights in their improvisational explorations. Led by singer/guitarist Barry Komitor, a fixture in New York’s vibrant folk and bluegrass scene, the group has amassed a strong local following on the heels of successful shows at Brooklyn Bowl, Brooklyn Night Bazaar, Elements Music and Arts Festival and more. Bad Faces’ rhythm section is powered by Brian Stollery, one of the best known figures in NY jam music on bass, and NY’s most exciting young jazz drummer, Ethan Kogan.

    Hitting the decks to close out the night is DJ, producer, Gatto, who’s been part of NYC’s underground house music scene for nearly 20 years.  You can find Gatto spinning at fashion shows, special events and top night clubs in NYC and beyond, while his eclectic music productions are dropping on record labels in Europe and in the U.S.

    Rockwood Music Hall is located at 196 Allen St, NYC.  VIP tickets are available, and will include a premium, private viewing platform, a signed copy of Toubab Krewe’s new album ‘Stylo,’ plus a special gift bag of merchandise and other surprises.  Get your tickets [HERE]

    Music For Progress with Toubab Krewe, Gatto, NYC

  • Tina La Porta opens her first solo exhibition, Side Effects in South Florida on September 29th in the FAR Gallery at FATVillage Projects. The presentation is a candid oeuvre on La Porta’s encounter with mental illness and her skilled approach to creating a pharmaceutical, candy-like frenzy to the viewer’s eye and psyche.

    Far Gallery is a long corridor of two walls facing North and South to the main entrance, making the task for any curator or artist challenging to organize works within the space without it becoming predictable. Nonetheless, La Porta and curators Vee Carallo and Leah Brown strategized the area by assembling the wall sculptures in a non-linear format, concentrating on colors, geometric designs within the works and by the story of each prescription pill.

    Although La Porta is open about her way of life and how her functionality depends on the suppression her pills provide, she also comments in Indian Summer (2003) on the comfortable accessibility people have to order any prescription online. With its deceiving romantic shades of pink and old rose, Indian Summer 2003 exudes an ill feeling to a morning-after pill, direct from India without any proper instructions or what damaging side effects one is to expect from it.

    From La Porta’s grueling process to crush each pill, comes the construction of a larger disk or shape resembling a small tablet filled with an array of smaller capsules sprinkled in vibrant colors and delicious enough to want to bite. The sculptures look like cookies out of Willy- Wonka’s factory. It’s that “oh, sooo good to pop it in your mouth” feeling, successfully captured in Hand to Mouth, 2018 (plaster series). The series illustrates the severity of pharmaceutical dependency for folks who abuse the medical system, for individuals needing prescription drugs to function or the patient who is sternly instructed to “pick one” as La Porta shared after informing her doctor none were working; “plus, no one ever told me about all the crazy side effects I would have to deal with.”

    Worse yet, as La Porta explains “no one ever took the time to address my illness; instead they kept wanting to masquerade it with pills and not help heal me.” That is when La Porta turned to the wallpaper series Listening to a Voice, 2018 and Speaking to a Voice Unknown, 2018. The series flamboyantly plays with tropical designs, elaborate florals and feminine wallpapers under resin sculptures to illuminate the idea of wallpapering a wall destroyed by the time-space, covering up unwanted ugliness to anyone who dares tread so close to it, similarly to a band-aid pill.

    Side Effects is a quietly riveting exhibition because of its reflective nature but brightly bold in aesthetics and social comment on the pharmaceutical world.

    Opening Reception September 29th, 2018 from 6 – 10 p.m. at FATVillage Projects and on view through October 27th, 2018.

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    Written by Beláxis Buil

    Edited by Abel Folgar

  • Two very worthwhile documentaries open this week in New York City: Sasha Waters Freyer’s Garry Winogrand: All Things Are Photographable is a portrait of the groundbreaking photographer responsible for some of the most memorable images of the 1950s through ’70sDan Habib’s Intelligent Lives follows three young adults who are challenging old ideas of what is achievable for those with intellectual disabilities.

    Courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment

    Courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment

    Most of us have been intrigued by least one Garry Winogrand photo; perhaps “New York World’s Fair, 1964,” featuring several white women and one African-American man on a park bench; or the untitled image of a man upside down in midair on a city street. Winogrand’s photos, which capture nuance a well as overt movement, and the man “who turned street photography on its head” himself are both examined in All Things Are Photographable, an enjoyable doc full of images famous and lesser known. Along with testimonials from fellow photographers, museum curators and Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner, Freyer includes interview snippets with the late Winogrand himself, a gruff, outspoken Bronx native who often resisted analyzing his photographs, insisting that “all a photograph does is describe light on surface.” But Winogrand also admitted that a powerful image “makes you question what you think you know,” an apt description of his work.

    Courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment

    Courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment

    New York Times photo editor Jeffrey Henson Scales likens Winogrand’s images to choreography because “everyone is dancing” in them; another expert says that the photographer’s work “makes chaos visible,” as there often seems to be some kind of commotion just out of frame. Like many of his generation, Winogrand, who was born in 1928, started as a photojournalist, taking on assignments for Life, Look and other periodicals. He later defied magazine conventions and took pictures for their own sake. Winogrand’s career wasn’t without bumps and the film covers the cool reception to one especially controversial shot as well as his ill-timed Women Are Beautiful collection, published at the height of the Women’s Movement (1975). Though Winogrand’s style fell out of favor, his Public Relations book (1977) is now considered a forerunner of post-modern imagery.

    When Winogrand died at the age of 56 in 1984, he left behind thousands of rolls of undeveloped images, some of which were later presented in posthumous shows. His well-meaning admirers weren’t always as discerning as the photographer himself when it came to choosing which images to print.  Nonetheless, his work remains unparalleled, described by former MoMA head of photography John Szarkowski as “made up of energy, ambition, desperate moments and unfamiliar beauty.”

    Courtesy of LikeRight Now Films

    Courtesy of LikeRight Now Films

    Dan Habib’s moving Intelligent Lives makes a strong case for rethinking education for children with intellectual disabilities, as well as challenging the meaning of intelligence itself. The film opens with actor Chris Cooper narrating the story of his son Jesse, who was born with cerebral palsy. Based on the boy’s low scoring Stanford-Binet (standard IQ) test, Cooper and his wife were advised to institutionalize him. Instead they sent Jesse to “regular” schools, where he excelled. As Cooper says about traditional treatment of the intellectually challenged, “There are better ways, different ways.”

    We see these ways through the experiences of three young adults striving to build a “normal” life despite their disabilities. Naieer is a student at the progressive Henderson Inclusive School in Boston, where he excels in art despite difficulty with verbal communication. Micah attends Syracuse University, where he is studying for a certificate in disability studies and pursuing romance with a fellow student. Finally, there’s Naomie, who works at a snack concession at the Rhode Island State House, with the help of a job coach.

    Courtesy of LikeRightNow Films

    Courtesy of LikeRightNow Films

    Had the three been born 20 years earlier, they would probably have been institutionalized. The film looks at the history and distortion of the IQ test, whose creator, Alfred Binet, himself stressed its limitations. As shocking as it sounds today, the test was used on Ellis Island immigrants in the early 1900s, with approximately 80% of them subsequently deemed “feeble-minded.” Eugenics and forced sterilization would follow, with more recent atrocities like Willowbrook finally exposed and shut down. The film also shows the birth of the self-advocacy movement, which resulted in the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.

    Thanks to the Henderson School, programs like Syracuse University’s “Inclusive U” and Rhode Island’s Fogarty Center; Naieer, Micah and Naomie all have support systems and channels to higher education and training. They also each have families who continue to fight for their rights. Naieer’s parents worry that their tall, African-American son who sometimes acts erratically might run into trouble; Micah’s sister, a special education teacher, talks about his decision to be his own legal guardian. And though Naomie’s parents are non-English-speaking Haitian immigrants, her protective older brother is heavily involved in her life, enabling her to find fulfilling work in a beauty school.

    Courtesy of LikeRightNow Films

    Courtesy of LikeRightNow Films

    Intelligent Lives is an engaging and thought-provoking reminder that despite our progress in many areas of discrimination, those with intellectual disabilities are still waging a tough battle to live meaningful lives. Though the film’s three subjects are succeeding on their chosen paths, there’s a lot more to be done.

    Garry Winogrand: Everything is Photographable opens on September 19 at Film Forum.

    Intelligent Lives opens on September 21 at the Village East Cinema.

    Marina Zogbi