Todd Browning's 1932 film Freaks makes a fascinating companion piece to the feature documentary The Last American Freak Show.
The former is a cult horror film set in the world of circus sideshow performers — people with physical deformities that see them displayed as 'freaks'. The latter, currently screening as part of The Other Film Festival (Australia's only film festival by and about people with disabilities), is a documentary about a modern-day revival of such 'freak shows', and its rambling cross-country tour.
Although Freaks is ostensibly a morality play that aims to return dignity to these social outcasts, it arguably has the reverse effect, by seeking to unsettle the audience with its characters' 'otherness'.
Rather than 'otherness', The Last American Freak Show emphasises humanity. UK filmmaker Richard Butchins is conscious of the implicit irony in the well-intended show. His nagging question throughout is whether it amounts to exploitation, or if it restores dignity to the performers by letting them take ownership of their deformities.
The longest film (85 minutes) on a bill of mostly short films (60 minutes or less), its emphasis on humanity is typical of the festival program. These are not pity pieces, and there's no trite, condescending 'disabled people are people too' moral to be found. They are simply quality films, which shed light on the human experience, as impacted upon by various types of disability.
The Australian film Yolk (director Stephen Lance) is a bittersweet coming-of-age story about a young adolescent girl named Lena — her first acts of teenage rebellion and, more importantly, her budding sexuality. The communication gulf between Lena and her mother is exacerbated by Lena's Down Syndrome, yet it could reflect the experiences of any parent watching their child enter the difficult transition towards adulthood.
Set in the early 1940s, The Hunger House (UK, director Justin Edgar) is a dramatic sucker-punch; a twist on Of Mice and Men, in which a sharp-witted epileptic man and his mentally disabled friend endure a horrific encounter with the Nazis' eugenics program.
Perhaps the most harrowing film on the bill is the drama A Cosy Place for the Fish
(Iran, director Nasser Zamiri), in which a short-statured couple
prepare for the arrival of their first, long-awaited child. The threats
to the couple's dignity are numerous, and ultimately impinge upon their
lives via a most horrific turn of events.
Such films use fiction to explore the place of people with a disability in their