“Coming out saying I’m queer was easy, saying I’m also queer and disabled was extremely hard.” – Andrew Gurza
November 19, 2018 – Toronto – National Film Board of Canada (NFB)
Starting today, NFB.ca is featuring free online streaming of Jari Osborne’s National Film Board of Canada (NFB) documentary Picture This—an acclaimed profile of Toronto’s Andrew Gurza, a self-described “queer cripple” who’s made it his mission to make sex and disability part of the public discourse.
The NFB is making this award-winning short doc available for free streaming across a wide range of platforms, including its NFB.ca online screening room, YouTube channel and Facebook page. People can also own or rent Picture This at NFB.ca, as well as through iTunes and Amazon.
About Picture This
This 30-minute film follows Andrew as he plans the second edition of Justify My Love—a sex-positive play party that the international media was quick to call a “handicapped orgy” when it launched in Toronto the year before.
Andrew embraces his role as a poster boy for the cause with an honesty that is, in itself, a kind of striptease. At the heart of the film is the uneasy dichotomy that disabled people face, of feeling either invisible or like a freak show, especially with regards to their sexuality. With its insistent and unflinching gaze, Picture This invites us to see them for who they are.
Picture This has garnered six awards to date, including the Audience Award for Best Short Film and Best Canadian Short at both the Inside Out Toronto LGBT Film Festival and Halifax’s OUTeast Film Festival. In the US, it was named Audience Favorite (Short Film) at the North Louisiana Gay & Lesbian Film Festival and received the Best Documentary Short – Jury Award at Atlanta’s Out On Film festival.
Picture This is produced by Lea Marin and executive produced by Anita Lee at the NFB’s Ontario Studio in Toronto. It’s the third NFB documentary by Osborne, an award-winning filmmaker and journalist who previously worked with the NFB on Unwanted Soldiers (Canada Award, Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television Awards; Best Biography/History Documentary, Hot Docs) as well as Sleeping Tigers: The Asahi Baseball Story (Best Feature Documentary, San Diego Asian Film Festival).
Andrew Gurza is a disability awareness consultant and “cripple content” creator working to make the lived experience of queerness and disability accessible to all. His written work has been featured in Huffington Post, The Advocate, Everyday Feminism, Mashable, and Out.com. He has presented all across North America on what it means to be a Queer Cripple and the intersectionality of sex, queerness and disability. He is also the host of the DisabilityAfterDark podcast. You can find out more about his work at www.andrewgurza.com or connect with him on Twitter @andrewgurza.
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Promotional Material
Electronic Press Kit | Images, trailers, synopsis: Picture This
Associated Links
Andrew Gurza