Elsa
A Deafblind fencer and author fights through the pen and the sword just for the right to be seen.
Interview with Director/Producer Cameron S. Mitchell
Congratulations! Why did you make your film?
This film is a window into the myriad expressions of Deafblindness and ultimately of disability and queer identities through the lens of a queer disabled filmmaking team portraying a disabled individual. As the director, my mission was to give people a window into how not only the subject but the camera POV and team behind it shape how a story is told — and how much more intimate that story can be when it is inclusive all around. As members of FWD Doc, Producer Julia Muniz and I shaped the team with this in mind, and FWD Doc came in and paired us with the subject Elsa Sjunneson. FWD Doc for those wondering is an organization of over 500 disabled filmmakers. Through a partnership with them, our team, and the PBS American Masters Team this vision was able to come to light and you’ll have to see the film to decide how the message receives. It is a highly visual, auditory experience even down to the Audio Description and Extended Audio Description prepared by DPAN which I also recommend checking out even if you are not a Deaf and/or blind individual.
Imagine I’m a member of the audience. Why should I watch this film?
This film details the incredibly interesting and fascinating life of Deafblind fencer and published Marvel author Elsa Sjunneson. Her experience growing up with queer parents, in particular a father who performed in drag and was a staunch advocate in the queer community, shaped her and her understanding of the world. She also shaped the world back, she opines on significant moments in the film such as when “no one ever told [her] she couldn’t fence, but also no one ever told her she could” or like when her doctor told her parents when she was born that they should “put her in an institution and try again”. All of this pain and struggle is converted into beautiful creative fusion when Elsa channels it into an opportunity to write for the character of Peggy Carter in Women of Marvel #1 and seriously pursue fencing at the Salle Auriol Seattle Fencing Club under the tutelage of medal-winning Olympic fencing instructor Eric Piispanen.
How do personal and universal themes work in your film?
This film takes the experience of one Deafblind person and a Disabled filmmaking team and asks: why do we know Hellen Keller as the only Deafblind role model in mainstream culture? What are the ways that we define someone into a box like how Keller is often remembered as a child instead of a Vaudeville performer, a US Ambassador, and Elsa by extension wants to fight being typified into any role which is why the film highlights her fencing, hiking, swing dancing, among the many other things that make her and by extension us Human.
How have the script and film evolved over the course of their development?
This project evolved in a very unique way. Because of tight deadlines and a production process that occurred basically over one month, we had to do the interview on day two of two of filming (yes it was shot over only two days). My team approached this head-on, doing a phone interview ahead of time and then having Julia and myself sit down to construct the script that we saw taking place over the course of the shoot. Untypical to a lot of modern documentary, we had to do a pre-visualization of the entire story and I feel that our backgrounds as disabled filmmakers with experience in Disability Studies allowed us to connect with the subject and form an immediate bond of trust that resulted in the film you see today. While some things changed, most of the script surprisingly stayed the same with the exception of the interlude on Keller which we constructed on the request of PBS — but of course, now that the part is in I couldn’t imagine the film any other way. Elsa also has an extended episode on Exorcising the Ghost of Hellen Keller on NPR Radiolab that can be heard for a further extension on this topic. My goal as the director/DP was to synthesize the visual with the subject and use filmmaking as a means of accessibility on the subject. For instance, I let Elsa move in her space and rarely stopped her as I filmed mobile and handheld as well as on a gimbal. For lighting, I kept this nimble approach by utilizing an Aputure 300d with a dome on a menace arm as our primary light for the fencing scene. We uplift the back walls stylistically but also as part of a visual aid for Elsa - her eyes need lots of light stimulus in dark places otherwise they “break” like the aperture of a camera as she explained to me and it takes a while to get them back. All the while filming this, I thought of Jean Luc Goddard and the invention of the dolly as a wheelchair and how the history of film is inextricably tied with disability in some ways. This is the biggest way the story changed, how we interacted and moved with the subject informed the flow and feel of the final edit constructed by myself and the editor, Anthony Johns.
What type of feedback have you received so far?
The feedback has really been amazing. We’ve been to multiple Oscar-qualifying film festivals and the opening night premiere at Slamdance is all a sign that we’re doing something right and that people want to see this new, divergent content. Newspapers from around the US have covered us including the Times Union and the Park Record. I’ve had disabled individuals write to me and give me their sign-off on this piece, that we aren’t fetishizing her disability and rather are fully portraying Elsa as a person which has been one of the most important concerns from the beginning. Perhaps one of the best moments was knowing that my sister Emma, who is blind and has CP, was able to view this film with audio description and extended audio description. Films should include Blind audiences and audio description is a huge part of that inclusion.
Has the feedback surprised or challenged your point of view?
I’ve definitely grown to be a more staunch advocate for burned-in subtitles and venues with audio descriptions. I understand why Blind and Deaf audiences are starting to boycott theaters that don’t provide this access as a base part of their programming and I have tried to push for a path to include that organically instead of it feeling like this big, unattainable goal that it can be treated as. That’s my biggest takeaway from our festival run and in the future, I may not be as accommodating to places that don’t fight automatically for the inclusion of all audiences.
What are you looking to achieve by having your film more visible on www.wearemovingstories.com?
I hope that people see this story and see the intersectionality of someone like Elsa who is queer, a woman, Deafblind and our own filmmaking team which includes queer, disabled, POC members on the team. Stories can be very different when we allowed these perspectives to be heard and give them a main stage and I really appreciate we are moving stories for highlighting women and inclusive stories. I want disability to be a part of that wherever it is mentioned as I think it is often excluded from diversity and inclusion efforts. Thank you We Are Moving Stories for recognizing that and including this story as a part of your programming.
Who do you need to come on board (producers, sales agents, buyers, distributors, film festival directors, journalists) to amplify this film’s message?
We need producers and production companies to come on board to make the feature which continues to be requested and commented on. People feel as if they haven’t got enough of Elsa and we need industry support to recognize that hole in the demand vs supply and come on board with us to carry this message to the next step. As a filmmaker, I am also currently looking for representation from a manager and studio who understands these core principles and wants to get behind disability inclusion stories as divergent, new perspectives in the media. I see myself as a bit of a surrealist and I think disability can subvert, change, and challenge our realities as well as encourage us to stray from “normal”, whatever that means.
What type of impact and/or reception would you like this film to have?
I would like to see people talking about this film and other successful films of the recent past like last year’s best feature at the Oscars, Coda; like the Sundance Doc winning Didn’t See You There. I want to see Elsa be embraced and for people to like, share, and disseminate this content so we can see more like it and open up a further multiverse of disability stories.
What’s a key question that will help spark a debate or begin a conversation about this film?
Why aren’t we telling Deafblind people they can fence? Why don’t we feel comfortable enough to encourage things like that and why do we feel more comfortable in telling people what they can’t do generally speaking than what they can?
Would you like to add anything else?
Please follow my pages and the film’s pages on Instagram etc and share this work if you want to see more content like it. This will be my second time at Slamdance, and if you like this I guarantee you’ll like my first film which was at Slamdance, The Co-Op, about how a robber’s plans go horribly awry when he discovers that the grocery store he has targeted is full of disabled people. That’s on YouTube.
What other projects are the key creatives developing or working on now?
I am currently in post-production on my first feature documentary entitled Disposable Humanity which details my family’s involvement in unburying the fading history of the Aktion T4 program: a secret Nazi program that targeted disabled people and resulted in the technology and staff necessary to implement the Holocaust. It’s like a family road trip through that history and is quite a ride as the T4 centers where the crimes are committed are all still standing and preserved unlike many of the death camps such as Auschwitz II Birkenau. For more information on that visit www.DisposableHumanity.com. I am also developing several TV shows and features including one about a little person detective named Nicholas who is investigating the murder of his boyfriend on the planet of Aurelia—that one’s called Truckr. I also have an episodic pilot called All Is Dust about a group of bionic vagabonds who set out to destroy the company that ruined the earth’s atmosphere and turned it into a memory-erasing inhospitable climate. Finally, I have a feature called The Woods about two teenagers who decide to live out Thoreau’s Walden and escape their abusive families to build a cabin in the woods, only to find that nature is not as prevalent and the environment is almost entirely corroded as they are haunted by a supernatural beast living amongst the woods.
Interview: January 2023
We Are Moving Stories embraces new voices in drama, documentary, animation, TV, web series, music video, women's films, LGBTQIA+, POC, First Nations, scifi, supernatural, horror, world cinema. If you have just made a film - we'd love to hear from you. Or if you know a filmmaker - can you recommend us? More info: Carmela
Elsa
A Deafblind fencer and author fights through the pen and the sword just for the right to be seen.
Length: 7:48
Director: Cameron S. Mitchell
Producer: Julia Muniz
Writer: Cameron S. Mitchell and Julia Muniz
About the writer, director and producer:
CAMERON S. MITCHELL is an award-winning Director, Writer, Producer, and DP. His work has been featured on Netflix, Hulu, HBO, Amazon, PBS and CBS, and includes Emmy award-winning shows such as Cat People (Netflix), Mare of Easttown (HBO) and the Drew Barrymore Show (CBS). His career spans over a decade of major feature films and television shows including camera operator work on Paint (Starring Owen Wilson, theatrical release in 2023), Iron Fist (Marvel, Netflix), A Little Bit Pregnant with Danielle Brooks (Netflix), The Garden Left Behind (SXSW Audience Award Winner, Dir. Flavio Alvez) as well as DP work on Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time (Hulu), Resurrection (IFC Behind the Scenes, Sundance Official Selection, Starring Rebecca Hall and Tim Roth) and ESPN Sportscenter. He is the Director/DP of Elsa (PBS American Masters, Winner: Filmocracy), The Co-Op (Winner: Bergen International Film Festival, Slamdance Official Selection, Now on the Slamdance Channel), Branded (Temple News Documentary of the Year), the addy nominated Toyota Haul Away Hunger series (Toyota, Philabundance), and Heartbeat (Winner: LA Music Video Awards, Winner: Awareness Film Festival). You can view many of these award-winning projects and more at his website, www.cameronsmitchell.com.
JULIA MUNIZ is an award-winner Brazilian storyteller based in Los Angeles whose work aims to inspire, empower and raise awareness through JEDI (Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion) storytelling in front of and behind the camera. Her projects have been recognized by prestigious film festivals such as Tribeca, UrbanWorld, American Black, HollyShorts, just to name a few; her experience also involves being Audience Coordinator for Emmy Award winner shows such as The Late Late Show with James Corden (CBS), The Voice (NBC) and others. As a member of the disabled community with her invisible disabilities (such as ADD), her work can be seen in projects like a PSA Fair Housing commercial starring CODA Academy Award nominee Paul Raci (Sound of Metal) to raise awareness about the right of effective communication for the deaf and hard of hearing community; Doha Debate’s webseries My Disability Justice, portraying different realities; an EsterSeals’ webseries with neurodivergent kids; and Academy Award and BAFTA qualifier Slamdance Film Festival, as Jury and Programmer of the Unstoppable category, created to highlight disabled filmmakers and reframe the narrative around accessibility in the industry.
CAMERON S. MITCHELL and JULIA MUNIZ are the queer disabled documentary producing and writing team behind Elsa. They are both members of FWD Doc, an organization for disabled filmmakers, and have served as programmers and jurors for Slamdance Unstoppable.
Key cast: Elsa Sjunneson (self), Eric Piispaanen (self)
Looking for: producers, distributors and journalists
Facebook: Elsa
Twitter: @csmdop
Instagram: @camerons.mitchell
Hashtags used: #elsathefilm #elsathedocumentary #cameronsmitchell
Website: cameronsmitchell.com/elsa
Other: YouTube
Where can I watch it next and in the coming month?
Slamdance/Park City - January 20th (Opening Night), at 7:15pm in the Crescent Room at the Treasure Mountain Inn in Park City, Utah
Slamdance/Salt Lake City - January 25th, 5 pm at the Student Union Theater located on the University of Utah campus as a part of Unstoppable Block 2