unseen: Life as a Blind Immigrant

Behind-the-(un)Scene: Know Your Rights as an Immigrant with a Disability

It’s been almost three years since unseen first premiered. Just when we thought that we’re wrapping up, the current political climate around immigration enforcement reinvigorated the work we’re doing. This episode is a special know-your-rights workshop geared for disabled immigrants, family members, or allies if ever they encounter ICE or immigration enforcement authorities at home, work, and healthcare settings. We recognize that there has been a big gap on how mainstream immigrant rights organizations overlook the access needs of disabled immigrants in providing critical information at this moment, so we hope the information presented here provides crucial and accessible information.

Behind-the-(un)Scene: Impact Deconstructed

Our film unapologetically prioritized blind and undocumented immigrant audiences – communities that are systemically pushed to the margins. As unseen’s impact campaign comes to a close after two years, we want to share our process and journey with you. Geared for those who want to use cinema for social impact, this episode was recorded during a live webinar where we unpacked every step of our impact campaign. Featuring the disabled-, queer-, and undocumented-led team behind unseen, we contemplate process, values centered, and learnings gained to bring to life our film and its impact campaign.

Behind-the-(un)Scene: Understanding What Is Unseen

Through an interview with our impact producer emeritus, Qudsiya Naqui, on her show Down to the Struts, we talk about the values that guided the making of our film-turned-podcast, unseen. Featuring a conversation between Qudsiya, our main protagonist, Pedro, and director/producer, Set, the three talked about the shared experience that led them to create the project. They also discussed the role of accessibility as a core value in the filmmaking process and the healing space that they hope unseen will generate as it touches audiences around the country and around the world.  Thanks to our Qudsiya for letting us borrow from her show. You can find Down to the Struts wherever you get your podcast.

Behind-the-(un)Scene: Flipping the Script on Audio Description

Through her interview with Thomas Reid on Reid My Mind Radio, we're highlighting Nefertiti Matos Olivares, who voiced the audio description for our film and podcast. In addition to narration, Nefertiti is a Quality Control specialist, workshop facilitator and AD advocate and writer. Unfortunately, it’s that last role, writer, that still continues to be a bit controversial. It’s expected that those with no understanding of blindness would doubt your ability, but receiving that from those within the community is another thing altogether. In this conversation, Thomas and Nefertiti talk about her early experience with inaccessibility, ableist thoughts and the impact it had on her own life, her decision to pursue a passion and the response from the AD community when it was announced that she was writing description for an all Blind AD production project. Thanks to our mentor and accessibility producer, Thomas Reid, for letting us borrow from his show. You can find Reid My Mind Radio wherever you get your podcast.

Behind-the-(un)Scene: The Art of Access with Cheryl Green

We're highlighting the independent access artist Cheryl Green, who served as accessibility producer and wrote the audio description for our film and podcast. Through her interview with Thomas Reid on Reid My Mind Radio, get to know Cheryl as a filmmaker focusing on disability identity and culture and making media accessible. She began making films after acquiring disabilities from brain injury. Her media combine personal narrative and activism to create dynamic tools that critically challenge misconceptions and stereotypes of disability, celebrate pride in disability experiences, and amplify marginalized voices. Cheryl works to create a platform for people to use the arts to increase connectedness and to promote dialogue and change within the larger community. Hear why Cheryl views Captions and Audio Description as an artistic part of the film/media and a means of achieving disability justice and equity. Thanks to our mentor and accessibility producer, Thomas Reid, for letting us borrow from his show. You can find Reid My Mind Radio wherever you get your podcast.