LIVES WORTH LIVING
Premieres on the PBS Series INDEPENDENT LENS
Thursday, October 27 at 10 PM During
National Disability Employment Awareness Month
Powerful Documentary Chronicles the History of America's
Disability Rights Movement
While there are over 54 million Americans living with
disabilities, Lives Worth Living is the first television history of
their decades-long struggle for equal rights. Produced and directed by
Eric Neudel, Lives Worth Living is a window into a world inhabited by
people with an unwavering determination to live their lives like
everyone else, and a look back into a past when millions of Americans
lived without access to schools, employment, apartment buildings, and
public transportation - a way of life unimaginable today. Lives Worth
Living premieres on the Emmy(r) Award-winning PBS series Independent
Lens, on Thursday, October 27, 2011 at 10 PM (check local listings) to
coincide with National Disability Employment Awareness Month.
Lives Worth Living traces the development of the disability
rights movement from its beginning following World War II, when
thousands of disabled veterans returned home, through its burgeoning in
the 1960s and 1970s, when it began to adopt the tactics of other social
movements. Told through interviews with the movement's pioneers,
legislators, and others, Lives Worth Living explores how Americans with
a wide variety of disabilities - including blind, deaf, physical,
intellectual and psychiatric - banded together to change public
perception and policy. Through demonstrations and legislative battles,
the disability rights community finally secured equal civil rights with
the 1990 passage and signing into law of the Americans with Disabilities
Act, one of the most transformative pieces of civil rights legislation
in American history.
To learn more about the film, and the issues involved, visit the
film's companion website at www.pbs.org/independentlens/. Get detailed
information on the film, watch preview clips, read an interview with the
filmmaker, and explore the subject in depth with links and resources.
The site also features a Talkback section, where viewers can share their
ideas and opinions.
About the Participants, in Order of Appearance
Fred Fay, early leader in the disability rights movement
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Ann Ford, director of the Illinois National Council on
Independent Living
Judy Heumann, leading disability rights activist, Co-Founder of
World Institute on Disability
Judi Chamberlin, Mental Patients Liberation Front, a movement
for the rights and dignity of people with mental illness (1944-2010)
Dr. William Bronston, former staff physician at the notorious
Willowbrook State School who was dismissed after agitating for change
Bob Kafka, established ADAPT of Texas, a disability rights
advocacy organization
Zona Roberts, counselor, UC Berkeley's Physically Disabled
Students' Program and Center for Independent Living, Berkeley; mother of
disability rights pioneer Ed Roberts
Pat Wright, Former Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund
John Wodatch, Former Chief, Disability Rights Section, Civil
Rights Division, U. S. Department of Justice
Jack Duncan, Former Counsel, U.S. House of Representatives
Mary Jane Owen, disability rights activist, philosopher, policy
expert, and writer
Marca Bristo, CEO, Access Living of Metropolitan Chicago, former
chair of the National Council on Disability, and leader in the
disability rights movement
Michael Winter, Former director, Berkeley Center for Independent
Living
Lex Frieden, Former director, National Council on the
Handicapped (now National Council on Disability)
Dr. I. King Jordan, President Emeritus, Gallaudet University
Jeff Rosen, alumni leader, Gallaudet University
Senator Tom Harkin, (D-Iowa), co-author of the ADA
Bobby Silverstein, Former Chief Counsel, Senate Subcommittee on
Disability Policy
Richard Thornburgh, U.S. Attorney General, 1988-1991
Tony Coelho, Former Congressman (D-California), House Majority
Whip, 1986-1989, author of the ADA
Justin Dart, leader in the disability rights movement (1930 -
2002)
About the Filmmaker
Eric Neudel (Producer/Director) has produced, directed, and
edited numerous award-winning films for public television. His many
credits include Eyes on the Prize, AIDS: Chapter One, LBJ Goes to War,
Tet 1968, Steps, After the Crash, The Philippines and The US: In Our
Image, Body and Soul, and more. He was a visiting senior critic and
lecturer in film at Yale University and served as producer, director,
and editor for Harvard University's Derek Bok Center for Teaching and
Learning, and Spectrum Media's program series on the art and craft of
teaching. Neudel was also a photographer and video production
consultant, teaching video production to a team working for the Compass
Project in Malawi. Photographs from his two years in Malawi were
exhibited in the Sandra and Phillip Gordon Gallery at The Boston Arts
Academy in October 2007.
He also served as story consultant for Row Hard No Excuses, an
award-winning documentary about two middle aged American men who set out
to cross the Atlantic in a rowboat. Most recently he served as a
photographer in Rwanda for The Boston Globe, where he directed,
produced, and edited a companion documentary about the Maranyundo Middle
School, which was built on the site of one of the worst concentration
camps and killing fields in Rwanda.
About Independent Lens
Independent Lens is an Emmy(r) Award-winning weekly series
airing Thursday nights at 10 PM on PBS. The acclaimed anthology series
features documentaries and a limited number of fiction films united by
the creative freedom, artistic achievement, and unflinching visions of
their independent producers. Independent Lens features unforgettable
stories about a unique individual, community or moment in history.
Presented by the Independent Television Service (ITVS), the series is
supported by interactive companion websites and national publicity and
community engagement campaigns. Further information about the series is
available at www.pbs.org/independentlens. Independent Lens is jointly
curated by ITVS and PBS; it is funded by the Corporation for Public
Broadcasting (CPB), a private corporation funded by the American people,
with additional funding provided by PBS and the National Endowment for
the Arts. The series producer is Lois Vossen.
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