Superfest Award Winners Screening: Chicago Showcase Watch Party

Join the UIC Disability Cultural Center for a Chicago showcase of the Superfest Disability Film Festival! Watch these exciting films in community, and help us vote for some Chicago picks! On Friday, we’ll get together for a watch party of the official Award Winners Screening (we’ll throw in a bonus film or two), and on Saturday, we’ll be screening seven films. Light refreshments will be served.

Co-sponsored by Chicagoland Disabled People of Color Coalition and Bodies of Work.

What is Superfest?

Superfest Disability Film Festival is the longest-running disability film festival in the world. Since it first debuted in a small Los Angeles showcase in 1970, it has become an eagerly anticipated international event — hosted by Paul K. Longmore Institute on Disability at San Francisco State. For more than 30 years, Superfest has celebrated cutting-edge cinema that portrays disability through a diverse, complex, unabashed and engaging lens.

COVID-19 safety:

UIC does not require masking, but we are still masking indoors as an accessibility measure for chronically ill/immunocompromised folks and those living interdependently with them. Please wear a mask. We’ll have extras on hand. Some people may unmask briefly to eat refreshments, but we’ll have a “no unmasking” area designated to make physical distancing possible.

Access info:

• CART (live captions) and ASL will be provided for announcements, and all films have open captions.
• On Friday, we will watch the films with open audio description. On Saturday, closed audio descriptions will be available for attendees.
• Student Center East is near the Blue Line, Roosevelt bus and Halsted bus. There is a drop-off area on Halsted Street, and a parking garage across the street at Halsted and Polk.
• The Cardinal Room is accessible by elevator or escalator. The elevator is located near the Halsted Street entrance, near the information desk.
• SCE has all-gender and accessible restrooms available, though many do not have automatic doors. We’ll have people available at each screening for access requests: opening doors, giving directions, etc.
• Contact dcc@uic.edu with any other access questions or requests.

Can’t come in person to watch with us?

Friday’s Award Winners Screening is also available on Zoom, 4:30-6 p.m.

The entire festival is available for streaming online from Thursday, Oct. 17, until Sunday, Oct. 20.

About the films

For descriptions and posters of the 2024 films, see the full lineup, and content warnings are available online.

Friday lineup

• Watch Party: Superfest Award Winners Screening
• “Diagnonsense” (Best of Festival – Fiction), 27 minutes
• “Friendly Signs” (Advocacy Award), 21 minutes
• “I Told You So” (Best of Festival- Documentary), 27 minutes
• “Mobility Rights” (Disability Justice Award), 20 minutes
• “Sleepyhead” (Innovation in Craft Award), 10 minutes
• Bonus films TBA

Saturday lineup

• “Dancer,” 13 minutes
• “Mo <3 Kyra”: 13 minutes
• “Ten to One,” 6 minutes
• “Tie Your Camel and Trust in God,” 12 minutes
• “Possum,” 15 minutes
• “LUKi and the Lights,” 11 minutes
• “Existing Patient,” 17 minutes

This event is funded in part by the University of Illinois Presidential Initiative: Expanding the Impact of the Arts and Humanities, as part of a larger project called Cripping the Arts. Cripping the Arts is a multiyear collaboration between departments across the UIC and UIUC campuses, intended to explore disability arts-led transformations of arts spaces.