Filmmaker with Cerebral Palsy Explores the World

Reid Davenport has cerebral palsy. He didn’t let that stop him from becoming an award-winning filmmaker.

“I just want to make something different. I want it to be challenging. I just really like to express myself,” he shares.

His films explore the world from the perspectives of people with disabilities.

Video Transcript

Oakland, CA: Reid Davenport is an award-winning filmmaker. He has cerebral palsy.

Reid Davenport: I just want to make something different. I want it to be challenging. I just really like to express myself.

My name is Reid Davenport — I’m a filmmaker.

I’ve done a few short films related to disability. So I use a drone camera to shoot the wheelchair shots because it’s smaller, I can hold it and it’s stable. And I just got this new camera, which is like a mini version, so I can really get the interactions.

(Speaking to producer: I like you in back of the flag.)

And I’m in the early productions of an essay film — experimental — where I basically go around and I film the ground from my wheelchair. And then I film interactions with people. The working title is, “I Didn’t See You There.”

From my wheelchair, focusing on the ground so much, I see the ground much more than other people, and I think I feel the ground more. I see the patterns of it. And related to that, the sense of gravity, the sense of being lower to the ground.

When I’m at crosswalks, I usually get cut off by cars.

(Speaking to others: Come on, guys! … Hi, how are you?)

I’m very much, I think, exploring the precariousness between myself and the external world. I don’t think there will be an answer to what that relationship is. But in exploring it, I hope to understand it more, and have other people understand it.