Disability Representation Behind the Camera

Joeita Gupta:
I'm Joeita Gupta and this is The Pulse. There has been a lot of discussion about disability representation on screen. The portrayals of disabled people can often be inaccurate or reliant on stereotypes. More recently, we have even heard growing discontent with able-bodied actors playing people with disabilities on screen and calls that characters with disabilities should be played by real people with disabilities are growing louder. What seems to, as yet anyway, be a footnote in these conversations is a discussion about disability representation behind the camera. This is an important exclusion. The absence of people with disabilities behind the camera is a fundamental exclusion, which restricts what stories we tell and how we go about telling them. Today we discuss disability and filmmaking. It's time to put to your finger on The Pulse.
Hello and welcome to the Pulse on AMI-audio. I'm Joeita Gupta, joining you from Accessible Media Studios in Toronto. Today my hair is pulled back in a ponytail and I have my black headphones and I'm wearing a teal shirt, which it has an interesting neck. It's sort of a V-neck, but the fabric is sort of folded over. I'm doing an absolutely terrible job of describing this, but the fabric is sort of folded over so that it's in almost in layers folded one on top of the other. I should not be describing things for a living. Okay, I'm going to leave it there before I dig myself in any further. I am really delighted to welcome Nasreen Alkhateeb to the program. She is a really talented filmmaker. Nasreen Alkhateeb is an award-winning filmmaker whose work illuminates historically excluded voices.
As a director of photography Nasreen has lensed Kamala Harris' successful vice presidential campaign, Oprah's Emmy award-winning series, Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man. The First Disabled Astronauts that was the AstroAccess project that we actually talked about on The Pulse, and the Black Women Who Revolutionized Fashion. She executive produced East of the River that was supported by the Tribeca Film Festival and she directed campaigns for NASA and the Women's March, in addition to lensing scripted films centring gay and disabled lead characters. Nasreen has a really impressive resume and again, I am so delighted to welcome Nasreen to the program. Hello and welcome to The Pulse. Thank you so much for speaking to me today.

Nasreen Alkhateeb:
Thank you so much for having me, Joeita. I really appreciate you making the space for us to have this conversation.

Joeita Gupta:
Now you said some very kind things about my descriptive ability, so let me give you an opportunity to describe what you have on today. We love talking fashion, right?

Nasreen Alkhateeb:
Well, yeah, of course. My name is Nasreen Alkhateeb. I use the pronoun she/ her and hers. I live on unseated Tongva land. I have seven identities and six disabilities. I am multi-heritage. I'm both Black and Iraqi. I work as a cinematographer and director in film and television. I am sitting on a chair that has a tall wooden back. I am wearing army green jacket with a charcoal shirt underneath and my hair is pulled up right now.

Joeita Gupta:
That's great. That colour looks really nice, army green, I think it suits just about everybody. Nasreen, let me ask you about how you got into filmmaking. What attracts you to filmmaking?

Nasreen Alkhateeb:
Within filmmaking, there's an opportunity to build a world that you may not necessarily have access to. By building those worlds and sharing it with audiences you may never meet in person, you probably won't ever meet in person it brings the opportunity to shift our culture to be more inclusive, to have more empathy for people that walk in different shoes than you or don't walk at all.

Joeita Gupta:
How would you say, because you did such a good job of describing your heritage and your multiple identities, how does all of that shape your journey and your practice as a filmmaker?

Nasreen Alkhateeb:
Being raised with so many identities and having to find the normal in that, it means I approach subjects and I approach stories and the projects that I work on without predetermined conceptions. So often I was looked at a certain way, my family was looked at a certain way and it limited what opportunities I had, it limited who I could interact with and what teams I was chosen for. So having that experience, knowing there's so much I don't know about someone's personal experience, especially if they come from a certain identity, I still may not know who they are, what world they come from, what experiences they've had. So honestly, all of the identities that I've been raised with has given me a really distinct lesson of shut up and listen. You have no idea what the story is about yet. Make sure you pick up all the rocks and look under all of them in order to help tell this story accurately.

Joeita Gupta:
At what point in your life did you start to self-identify as disabled?

Nasreen Alkhateeb:
So in 2018, I was struck by hit and run in a parking lot, and that moment took away my ability to walk and I didn't walk again for about a year and a half, and it changed the way I interact with my home. It changed the way I interacted with transportation, how I was able to function as a filmmaker on set, it changed everything and I started to get more immersed in the disability community and start to realize how incredibly one-sided everything is designed. I come from an art background, so when I look at a room or I look at a tool, I think about all the different ways to use it, but often these tools, these spaces are not designed for everyone. They're only designed for 70% of people or less.
And that became more apparent when I became physically disabled and couldn't walk. Just going up and down stairs on my knees multiple times a day made me exhausted and then it was like a trickle effect. It was like a ripple effect. I couldn't visit certain buildings that didn't have arm rails because I wasn't steady. I wasn't willing to take that risk going up a pair of stairs and then potentially breaking another bone. So there was a lot of pre-planning that had to go into, I have to basically reach out and find out if me, my body is not only safe in these spaces, but welcomed and if I'm not welcomed, do I really need to be there?

Joeita Gupta:
I want to ask you about being a filmmaker. You were a filmmaker before your accident and when the accident happened, and you've alluded to this, how you went about being a filmmaker changed significantly. What was that change like for you?

Nasreen Alkhateeb:
As a filmmaker, I spend the most amount of my time in pre-production, but as a disabled filmmaker, I spent a gargantuan amount of time in pre-production because now I have to put the sweat equity into helping my producers who may not be disabled understand what to ask for and how to make space for disability on set because inevitably there's going to be people with disabilities. There may even be people with disabilities who ignored their needs in order to fit into that system that is so very exclusive. So there's sort of like this learning period, this teaching period, and just the intention behind does everyone who is present on set, do all of those bodies have what they need to accomplish what we're trying to accomplish in the day? It's a very simple concept, but there definitely is a learning curve when it's bluntly put, we're making space for everyone, not just the select few.

Joeita Gupta:
Earlier on you used the term sweat equity. What does that mean?

Nasreen Alkhateeb:
To put sweat equity in, to me, sweat equity means you're often doing an unpaid job and you're doing it behind the intention of this will become something that will help the person receiving the information become normalized so that the next person behind me has a producer who now asks them, "Hey, what are the tools that you need on set so that we can make your day possible?" So the sweat equity I'm putting in may not necessarily benefit me, it may benefit me, but it will benefit other people after because now this producer, this line producer or this executive producer now has this concept of I wasn't thinking about the entire day and what it means for someone to have a tool on set for them to accomplish what they need in the day. Everyone has tools, we just need to expand what that definition is.

Joeita Gupta:
Nasreen, how has your accident and your self-identification as a person with a disability evolved your practice as a filmmaker in other ways? I'm thinking specifically about how you've changed the kinds of stories you're telling and the subjects you're choosing to talk about.

Nasreen Alkhateeb:
After I became disabled in 2018, it was apparent that every project that I take on will either help the identities that I occupy or hurt them. So showing up with my identities front and center and being very transparent about who I am and what experiences I come from and what identities I come from attracts collaborators to me who want to help tell those stories. And having the opportunity to tell those stories means creating a more inclusive environment so that people with my identities are less feared. The word disabled, even people within my family, even friends, this word makes them very uncomfortable. We were taught to be uncomfortable around that word. Around my white peers growing up, the word Muslim and Islam, it made them very uncomfortable.
Around my Arab family, the word Black and African American made them very uncomfortable. So there was all these identities that I occupy, this is not my choice, this is who I am. This is innately what my biology is. There's no amount of watering that down and I don't... To speak plainly, I was raised to fit into the preexisting structure and that preexisting structure is based off a white supremacist colonization of Black and brown people speaking a certain way, doing your hair a certain way, dressing a certain way, not using certain adjectives, not speaking about certain holidays.
I was raised to try and make sure that I could get those jobs and find those resources and as an adult now who's disabled and proud to say it, I'm showing up saying, no, all these things are not necessarily popular to say or identify with, but this is who I am and I want to work with people who are proud to work with someone like that, who want to work with someone like that. So yes, it excludes me from a number of projects, but it also opens up a whole world of projects that I want to invest my time in. I have a very limited amount of time here left. What I want do with that is make work that actually has an impact, that makes space for people like me, that makes space for people who are not like me, but who are also marginalized or othered in some way.

Joeita Gupta:
You use the word uncomfortable and discomfort a lot in the last few minutes, and I want to pick up on that idea of discomfort. We think of discomfort as a bad thing. As a filmmaker when you put something out there into the world, do you think that if audiences are left feeling uncomfortable or if they feel a degree of discomfort by seeing gay, disabled, Black, Muslim characters on screen, that that is a bad thing or is that really something that you would aspire for as a filmmaker to get people to feel a little uncomfortable so they start to question the status quo?

Nasreen Alkhateeb:
Technically if someone's already watching a documentary or already watching a film about a gay Muslim disabled character, there's some percentage of them that's open to feeling that discomfort. But I don't know how you were raised. I was raised to not make people feel uncomfortable, make them feel as comfortable as possible, but as you age and you become, your brain evolves, you understand that there's some opportunities in those uncomfortable times because something is happening internally, something is happening with your emotions and your mind that are not congruent, they're clashing and that discomfort is coming from that clash, which I think is a positive thing. Of course, I think there is opportunities for people to grow their mental capabilities and their empathy when that discomfort arises. The question is how many people are putting themselves in those situations versus how many people are avoiding that situation completely.

Joeita Gupta:
It's the people we're not getting to, that's the question. When we started talking just as you joined us on Riverside, which is our platform where we record things you said to me, and I thought it was such a beautiful quote, you said to me that it's past the point where we stop being polite about disability. What did you mean by that?

Nasreen Alkhateeb:
I have the great fortune and the privilege of being around disabled activists and disabled artists who are taking up space in the public eye in a very forward way, and what I'm hearing from a lot of them and how I feel personally is that we are past the point of being polite. I think it's been that way for a long time. I don't think this is new. I think it's just starting to get some traction publicly speaking in the media and what I mean when I say we don't have that space to be polite anymore, it means what we've done in the past and how people have treated disabled people in the past has not worked. It doesn't work. It's not working now. Actively speaking, it doesn't work and it's not inclusive.
And I can say firsthand that I was part of the problem because it wasn't until I was disabled, outwardly, physically, in a very severe way that I realized I was also part of a system and I was not making, I wasn't creating any waves. I was trying to fit into the preexisting structures that were not designed for me and as a disabled person trying to fit into those structures is actually detrimental to me. It's not just detrimental to my health, it's also detrimental to my job because it's giving misinformation. So the more vocal we are, the more direct we are about things that worked versus don't work, it actually doesn't just benefit the disabled folks who are in the room, at least 25% of people in the room of a hundred people.
It also, we've seen time and time again throughout history, disabled people who invent new systems and new ways of working benefit people who are not disabled. The phone, texting, curb cuts, all of those were invented for and by disabled people. Tell me you haven't used those at least 50 times today. You have if you're hearing this, chances are you have, and chances are the inventions we'll be inventing in the future you'll also be using, so make some space for us. The activist, Grace Hill, said to me once, there are two groups of people in the world. There are disabled people and there are people who will be disabled. And I think that's a very accurate statement. I think that our procedures, our structures aren't designed for that because there's some strange cultural shame around being disabled, but I think we're evolving slowly towards a more inclusive way of living.

Joeita Gupta:
Speaking of being more inclusive, you've alluded to the fact that many people with disabilities and indeed people from marginalized communities overall and maybe have not had the best experience with the media, with their portrayals on TV and in film. Given that you occupy these multiple hyphenated identities, how do you go about making a space safe and welcoming for subjects with disabilities, knowing that they may have deep misconceptions, maybe even fear about being in front of a camera and telling their stories or sharing their stories?

Nasreen Alkhateeb:
When I'm approaching a story, I'm doing a lot of listening. I feel like a sponge. I'm just learning and uncovering as much information as possible because whoever the story is about, this is their story. I'm not imprinting any of my preconceived notions on it. What I'm doing is helping the person that the story is about to tell it the most authentic and the most accurate way possible, and sometimes that means making sure that their comfort level is at a place where they can access those emotions and they can access that information. Sometimes being a filmmaker, it's not always using specific tools to obtain specific results. Sometimes it's just like turning a temperature down, making sure someone's body is physically more comfortable so that they are less stressed and can access memories that aren't necessarily at the top of their brain.
So it has a lot to do with each subject being different. And my ADHD brain loves that. I get to learn, I get to be a student with each project that I'm a part of, but also I get to bring all of my identities and make sure that the space carved out for that person, for that group of people is as safe as possible, is as comfortable as possible, so that they know that the story that they're helping to tell is important. It's important to me and it's going to be important to the audience who's going to receive it.

Joeita Gupta:
What advice would you give to someone else in your position who might be a disabled filmmaker or a filmmaker from another marginalized group? What is the best path forward for them?

Nasreen Alkhateeb:
You cannot do the work alone. You have to have collaborators. That's what makes storytelling so successful. That's what makes film and television so impactful, when multiple creative minds come together to create something that is evergreen, that actually shifts our culture in some way. You're doing that with collaborators who share the same values that you do, and in order to find those other filmmakers that share those values, you're going to go through a ton of rejections and those are rejections are never going to stop. It doesn't matter how successful you become or how unsuccessful you become, the rejections are going to be plentiful. Last week I got three rejection... Sorry. Last week I got three rejections in one day, and those were applications that I had put in a year prior, six months prior, three months prior, and they all came on the same day.
And I have to find some sort of success in that, but I also have to know that those things were not supposed to happen, and each rejection leads you that much closer to the success. So each no that you get leads you that much closer to the yes. So you have to go through them. Don't take it personally, just rack it up the same way like a girl scout racks up patches on a belt. Let it motivate you because those collaborators when you find them, are invaluable and you'll keep them for your entire life.

Joeita Gupta:
Nasreen, it's been such a pleasure chatting with you. I wish we had longer to talk, but unfortunately, we are all out of time. Thank you so much for speaking to me today.

Nasreen Alkhateeb:
Thank you so much. This was a pleasure to chat with you and I look forward to hearing more from your show later.

Joeita Gupta:
Nasreen Alkhateeb is a filmmaker and cinematographer, and it was a pleasure speaking to her today. Unfortunately, as I said to Nasreen, that's all the time we have today. If you have any feedback, you can send us an email feedback@ami.ca. You can give us a call 1-866-509-4545. That's 1-866-509-4545. Don't forget to leave permission to play the voicemail on the program. You can also find us on Twitter @AMIAUDIO, use #PULSEAMI. You can also still find me on Twitter at Joeita Gupta. Ted Cooper has been our videographer today. Marc Aflalo is our technical producer. Ryan Delehanty is the coordinator for AMI podcasts, and Andy Frank is the manager for AMI-audio. And I've been your host, Joeita Gupta. Thanks for listening.