Crip Camp by Nicole Newnham and Jim LeBrecht
Crip Camp by Nicole Newnham and Jim LeBrecht, an official selection of the U.S. Documentary Competition at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by Steve Honigsbaum

Netflix released the first official trailer for the documentary Crip Camp, which won the Audience Award for U.S. Documentary at this year’s 2020 Sundance Film Festival.

Directed by Nicole Newnham and Jim LeBrecht (a former camper himself), the documentary is executive produced by Barack Obama and Michelle Obama.

Released on the the same year as the 30th anniversary of the Americans With Disabilities Act, the landmark civil rights law that prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities, Crip Camp is a new documentary about Camp Jened, a camp for disabled teens in the 1970s that shaped the future of the disability-rights movement.

In the early 1970s, teenagers with disabilities faced a future shaped by isolation, discrimination, and institutionalization. Camp Jened, a ramshackle camp ‘for the handicapped,’ in the Catskills, exploded those confines. Jened was their freewheeling Utopia, a place with summertime sports, smoking and makeout sessions awaiting everyone, where campers felt fulfilled as human beings. Their bonds endured as they migrated West to Berkeley, California — a promised land for a growing and diverse disability community — where friends from Camp Jened realized that disruption and Unity might secure life-changing accessibility for millions.

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