Access: Horror Virtual Film Festival Sheds Light on Disability by ‘Centering Ableism as the Horror Rather Than Disability’

When Ariel Baska traded her 15-year career teaching Latin for the film industry, they were instantly faced with a series of unexpected guardrails. “I found that all of these doors were closed to me because I could not literally walk in the front door,” Baska tells Variety. “As someone who is on the deaf-blind spectrum and has mobility impairments as well, it makes it very difficult when you literally just can’t access the networking spots where everyone is gathered.” So, Baska decided to take matters into their own hands as the founder and co-director of Access: Horror, a disability-led horror and experimental virtual film festival. Access: Horror aims to provide access and representation to people with disabilities behind and in front of the camera. The organization brings awareness to how disability is portrayed in film while also making movies more accessible by adding content warnings, captions and audio descriptions. Popular on Variety The festival runs online from Oct. 4 to Nov. 1 with a large slate of films from emerging filmmakers, as well as a series of panels and filmmaker Q&As. Baska and co-director Heather Petrocelli focused their festival on the horror genre because of the fact that “ableism” and “disabled and disfigured bodies have been at the heart of horror from the beginning.” The lineup is separated into three blocks of programming: Edibles, The Body Keeps the Score and Dead Darlings. Among the titles featured in this year’s festival is Lee Cleaveland’s “Everhand,” where a one-armed farmer orders a mysterious machine, and he and his wife must face off with a company rep in order to reclaim their humanity. Another is Charlie Gillette’s “Tal,” which translates to ‘mask’ in English, which is a claustrophobic meditation on immigrant identity and familial expectations. “A Fermenting Woman” from Priscilla Galvez follows a peculiar chef and fermentation expert as they prepare a career-saving meal using a very special ingredient. Petrocelli and Baska’s goal in curating the festival lineup was to find films that align with their mission and reclaim disability’s role in the genre. “That reclaiming is entirely about centering ableism as the horror rather than disability as the horror,” Baska says. “Every James Bond villain, every Captain Hook character that you have in the world has made people afraid of difference, but if we turn that fear and that expectation into the horror, rather than the physical difference, whatever it may happen to be, whether it’s a limb difference, whether it’s a wheelchair, reframing the monster is the thing that is most essential for me and for the festival.” Along with their organization’s missions, the pair picked horror because of the conversations the genre provokes. “Horror is the most honest genre because that is what we are living through right now,” Baska says. “I feel like if we want to find ourselves, we have to find ways of engaging with the trauma that we’re all in at the moment. There’s a beating heart to horror. There’s an opera. There’s a frequency that horror nerds are attuned to that no one else is.” By giving a voice to novice filmmakers, they also ensure their goals of making films more accessible are heard. “The understanding is that if you are a filmmaker who plays with Access: Horror, we give you those assets [of content warnings, captions and audio descriptions] so you can play with them in future,” Petrocelli says. “But the expectation is that you will budget for them appropriately moving forward in your career, so it’s a way to both teach early-stage filmmakers about accessibility while also creating a better space for our audiences.” Created in 2023, Access: Horror is still finding its footing in the film festival world with the goal of continuing to grow and garner support. “We’re still kind of finding our way and negotiating as best we can in the way that accessibility is always kind of a negotiation, and you’re constantly trying to find your way between things,” Baska says. “At the same time, we just would ask that people consider the broader landscape that we are living in and make a real pitch for people to engage.”