Challenging the “Charity Mentality”: Disability and the Media

Lantern teams up with the Disabilities Network of NYC, MediaRights, and Whirlwind Creative to bring you a free screening and discussion of Fast and Reliable and The Kids Are All Right.

Fast and Reliable documents the story of Dexter Benjamin, a NYC bike messenger with one leg. “I was a bike messenger when I first moved to New York,” writes Director Tom Soper. “It's a tough job, not well paid but addictive because of the freedom it gives a person to roam the city as a member of a loose collective of fiercely independent characters, each with their own tall stories to tell.” Nothing can stop Dexter the bike messenger—not homelessness or even a close encounter with a ten-ton truck. Official selection of the fifth annual Media That Matters Film Festival. Winner of the Against the Odds Award. (2005. 8 min.) Producers Sean Morrison and Tom Soper (who is also the director) will attend.

The Kids Are All Right is a documentary about a renegade Jerry's Kid named Mike Ervin. A Muscular Dystrophy Association poster child in the 1960s, today Mike is an outspoken disability rights activist who challenges the MDA's representation of people with disabilities in its Labor Day telethon through his activist group, Jerry's Orphans. (2005. 30 min. Producer/ Director/ Editor Kerry Richardson.)

The screenings will be followed by a discussion moderated by Lawrence Carter-Long, DNNYC Network Co-Ordinator.

Light refreshments will be served.

Please RSVP by emailing Olivia.