15th Mar 2021
Who knew that down the road from Woodstock, a revolution blossomed in a ramshackle summer camp for teenagers with disabilities, transforming their lives and igniting a landmark movement? The extraordinary Netflix, now Oscar-nominated documentary Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution is the untold story finally told for the world to see.
Jennifer McShane speaks to the film’s co-director Nicole Newnham about its reverence and the push to continue breaking stereotypical barriers down for those with disabilities – in life and on screen
Co-directed by Emmy Award winner Nicole Newnham and film mixer and former camper Jim LeBrecht, we’re taken back in time to the early 1970s, where teenagers with disabilities faced a future shaped by isolation, discrimination and institutionalisation. Camp Jened, a ramshackle camp “for the handicapped”, exploded those confines. Jened was free from restraint; their freewheeling Utopia, a place with summertime sports, smokin