My Favourite Disability Film:

People: 

Colin Barnes, Anne Begg, Elizabeth Carr, David Colley, Lara Crooks, Elizabeth Crow, Nick Danzinger, Paul Darke, Steve Dwoskin, Mat Fraser, Tanni Grey, Paul K Longmore, Ian McKellen, Ferris Newton, Mik Scarlet, Harriet Wade, Ann Whitehurst, 

Favourite films:

Accion Mutante, Born on the Fourth of July, Coming Home, Denial,   Face Of Our Fear, Freaks , Johnny Got His Gun, Mandy, Miracle Worker, Reach for the Sky, Rear Window, Secret Garden, 
Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead, True Romance, Usual Suspects, Walter, Young Frankenstein, The Idiots.

Colin Barnes
Professor of Disability, University of Leeds

My favourite disability film is Steve Dwoskin's Face Of Our Fear: this is a dark, atmospheric but compelling documentary that deals with what for me is the essence of disability: ignorance and fear as reproduced in history and culture - brilliant.'

Anne Begg
The Disabled MP tor Aberdeen South

My favourite film which features a disability is The Usual Suspects because the suspect the audience least expects  to be the criminal mastermind  is the  one who has the disability and it challenges their assumptions when they find out.

Elizabeth Carr
Actor

My favourite disability film is Hitchcock's Rear Window as it captures some of the very personal emotions experienced by disabled people due to their exclusion: being forced to live on the outside, always feeling like you are looking in on what happens around you and not being allowed to be a part of it (no one listening to you as you point out the evils around you). Especially as you watch the future Ironside (Raymond Burr) getting up to no good.

David Colley
Chair , British Council of Disabled People

My favourite disability film is Accion Mutante because it is the most outrageous - it pushes the boundaries - it does not just reproduce stereotypes of disability. It turns on its head the notion of disabled characters as villains and revels in it.

Lara Crooks

The Deaf presenter of BBC 's See Hear

I chose the film Mandy because it gave a strong impact of how a deaf girl grew up into the unknown and how she had to cope with society's arrogance towards deaf people.

Elizabeth Crow

A disabled filmmaker

I have a soft spot for The Miracle Worker, partly because I've since learned about the 'real' Helen Keller (in adulthood, a radical, controversial political activist). In the film, triumph had to prevail over tragedy, but for its time it broke barriers and shocked the audiences by showing that a disabled child could rage.

Nick Danzinger

Photographer and Filmmaker

My favourite disability film is Reach for the Sky because Douglas Bader's extraordinary courage is inspirational.

Paul Darke

A disabled writer and artist., Digital Disability

My favourite disability films are Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein and Lars von Trier's The Idiots, because they both work with the knowledge that disability is intrinsic to the social and cultural illusions that perpetuate the fantasy that the 'normal' exists.

Steve Dwoskin

A disabled filmmaker

I would choose Johnny Got His Gun because it attempts to crystallize the feeling of disability while challenging the attitude of the non-disabled and the medical establishment towards it - without the use of the stereotypical images and narrative usually applied towards disability.

Mat Fraser 
A Disabled writer and actor

My favourite disability film is Freaks, because, even though it was made in 1932, it still stands  as the film  with  most disabled actors used in it.

Tanni Grey-Thompson
OBE Paraolympian athlete

My favourite disability film is Born on the Fourth of July as it shows how disabled people are treated medically. Tom Cruise did an excellent job of falling out of his chair drunk! (I laughed in the cinema and so did all my mates. A woman behind tapped me on the shoulder and told me it was disgraceful I was laughing at 'those poor people '!)

Paul K Longmore

A Disabled Professor of History at San Francisco State University

My favorite disability film is Coming Home because it centres on a disabled man who, as a complete and mature person, knows who he is, serves as a moral and emotional homebase for many people around him, and contributes to his society as a moral and political preceptor.

Ian McKellen
Actor

My favourite disability film was Walter (scripted by David Cook from his novel, directed by Stephen Frears and photographed by Chris Menges) not because it was my chance to work with such gifted filmmakers but because many physically and mentally handicapped people acted as extras, some of whom became lasting friends.

Ferris Newton
Educator and fine artist

My favourite disability film is The Secret Garden because in an age where cynicism is so rampantly aggressive that it threatens to make us ashamed and afraid of elemental feelings like sentiment and nostalgia, I demand the cathartic right, just occasionally, to weep saccharine tears. (I prefer the later, even more emotionally techno-chromic version .)

Mik Scarlet
A disabled TV presenter and musician

My all time favourite is True Romance, a film where the hero played by Christian Slater is obviously schizophrenic - holding conversations with the young (long dead) Elvis Presley - but comes out on top and ends up happy, getting both the girl and the cash. Not your normal role for a schizophrenic.

Harriet Wade
A disability researcher

I have yet to see a film  that in any way reflects my own experience as a you ng, congenitally disabled woman. Oth e rwise, my favourite disability film is Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead, with Christopher Walken as a psychotic tetra plegic. I love any film that uses the idea that disability makes you mean . All we can hope and pray for at th is stage is to avoid the opposite to the psychotic - the dreaded sain tly.

Ann Whitehurst
A Disabled conceptual artist

My favourite disability film is the short film Denial because it's the most satirical.