Weird & Wonderful, the Rise & Fight of the Disability Rights Movement

Written by Sarah Barton
Produced by Sarah Barton and Nell White
Developed with the assistance of Film Victoria, Screen Australia, City of Melbourne, The Winston Churchill Memorial Trust, Victorian Government Office For Disability
In development, seeking funding - contact us for further details.

Weird & Wonderful is a fast paced political history with a modern twist.  It tells the story of the disabled activists who fought their way out of institutions and iron lungs to change the way we understand disability.

 Although Paul Hunt grew up in a Cheshire home, an institution for the disabled, he refused to shoulder personal responsibility for his disability.  He didn’t care that he couldn’t walk but he was angry because he couldn’t cross the road in his wheelchair.  

 After the sport mad teenager Ed Roberts was paralyzed by polio he was forced to live in an iron lung.  The California department of rehabilitation said that he was too disabled to be rehabilitated, and refused to help him.  Ten years later he became head of that department and no one ever again was deemed too disabled to be helped.

 In Melbourne Lesley Hall hated the fact that the Miss Victoria beauty pageant raised money for disabled children yet a woman with a disability could never win.  She climbed up onto the stage during the presentation finale to demand that the Spastic Society stop using disabled children to make beautiful women feel good about themselves.

 This is a cross platform documentary that exists as an exploratory online world with multiple points for engagement and immersion following several key themes of the disability rights movement.  A linear single hour documentary also brings together the threads into a single fast paced narrative that references modern interpretations of disability rights and activism through the visual arts while also using dramatic archival material and interviews with key players in the world movement.