Vital Signs: Crip Culture Talks Back
Part 1
Part 2
YouTube has age-restricted this part, so it cannot be played here. Watch Part 2 on YouTube (you may need to sign in).
Part 3
Captions: The film has English subtitles built into the picture, so they appear automatically.
About this video
Made by David T. Mitchell and Sharon L. Snyder, Vital Signs follows disabled artists, activists and scholars through the performances, debates and late-night conversations of a national conference on disability and the arts. It became one of the defining records of the disability culture movement.
Cheryl Marie Wade appears alongside the performance artist Mary Duffy, the writers Anne Finger and Kenny Fries, and the scholars Harlan Hahn and Simi Linton. Wade performs her poem “Gimp Hands”, often known as “My Hands”, in the film. The text of that poem quoted in much of the writing about her was transcribed from this performance.
The film won the Grand Prize at the Rehabilitation International World Congress and an Achievement Award at Superfest, among other awards. It is distributed by Icarus Films as part of the Fanlight Collection. Mitchell wrote about making it in “Talking About Talking Back: Afterthoughts on the Making of the Disability Documentary Vital Signs”, Michigan Quarterly Review, Spring 1998.
The film is shown here in three parts, as posted on YouTube by David Mitchell. A slightly shortened version with German subtitles by Rebecca Maskos is also on YouTube.
Content note: the distributor advises that the film contains strong language and nudity.