Film Forum

The Center for Constitutional Rights works with communities under threat to fight for justice and liberation through litigation, advocacy, and strategic communications. Since 1966, CCR has taken on oppressive systems of power, including structural racism, gender oppression, economic inequity, and governmental overreach.

The NYC Disability Archive is building an archive of documents, photographs, media, and other objects to preserve New York City Disability Rights history in an archive at the College of Staten Island (CSI), CUNY in order to make them available for research and study. Few existing archives contain materials about individuals and groups in the New York metropolitan region who have fought for equal access to employment, education, transportation, healthcare, and representation in government.  

Reid Davenport makes documentaries about disability from an overtly political perspective. Reid’s first feature film, I DIDN’T SEE YOU THERE, won the Directing Award for U.S. Documentary at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. The film won the Grand Jury Prize at Full Frame Documentary Film Festival and the McBaine Bay Area Documentary Award at the San Francisco International Film Festival. It had a national broadcast on POV in 2023. The film has been hailed by critics: Nick Allen of RogerEbert.com described it as “first-person poetry in captivating motion, expressed with a singular, assured artistic voice.” Vox called it a “must-see.” In 2020, Reid was named to DOC NYC’s “40 Filmmakers Under 40.” His short film, A Cerebral Game, won the Artistic Vision Award at the 2016 Big Sky Documentary Film Festival. That film, along with his short documentaries Wheelchair Diaries and Ramped Up are distributed by New Day Films. Reid’s work has been supported by The Ford Foundation, Sundance Institute, Creative Capital, ITVS, NBCUniversal, CNN and the Points North Institute, among others. Reid was a 2017 TED fellow and gave a TED Talk about incorporating his own literal body into his filmmaking. His work has been featured by outlets like NPR, PBS, The Washington Post, MSNBC, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. Davenport received a Master of Fine Arts in Documentary Film & Video from Stanford University in 2016, and a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism and Mass Communication from The George Washington University in 2012.

Colleen Cassingham is a producer at Multitude Films focused on politically committed artful nonfiction. Most recently, she produced the IDA Awards-nominated shorts collection QUEER FUTURES, which premiered at CPH:DOX 2023 and is streaming on the Criterion Channel. Her past credits include Co-Producer on IT’S ONLY LIFE AFTER ALL (Sundance 2023), and Associate Producer on PRAY AWAY (Tribeca 2020), Call Center Blues (SXSW 2020), ALWAYS IN SEASON (Sundance 2019), THE FEELING OF BEING WATCHED (Tribeca 2018), and Love the Sinner (Tribeca 2017) which were distributed by Netflix, Topic, HBOMax, POV, and Independent Lens. Colleen's directorial debut short From Damascus To Chicago was broadcast on POV in 2017 and was an Editor’s Pick at The Atlantic. She was a 2023-2024 Sundance Producing Fellow, a 2023-2024 Impact Partners Producing Fellow, and a 2017–2018 UnionDocs Collaborative Studio fellow.

maya finoh is a political educator and cultural worker based on Canarsee Lenape land (Brooklyn, New York). maya has spent extensive time in various movement formations engaged in research, writing, and organizing rooted in Black queer & trans feminisms, fat liberation, disability justice, dismantling U.S. imperialism, and prison-industrial complex abolition. A graduate of Brown University with a B.A. in Africana Studies & Public Policy, maya currently serves as the Political Education and Research Manager at the Center for Constitutional Rights.

Jessica Murray is a disability rights activist and educator living in New York City. She currently creates faculty training on disability rights in education and Universal Design for Learning (UDL) for the City University of New York (CUNY) Office of Faculty Affairs. She is also documenting disability rights activism in New York City from 1945-present on at the College of Staten Island (CSI), CUNY. Objects from the archive and a postcard from the “Elevators Are For Everyone” campaign she designed for the Rise and Resist Elevator Action Group are included in the Activist New York exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York. Murray earned her Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology at The Graduate Center, CUNY in 2020. She has developed numerous digital research, education, and humanities projects, including rosaparksbiography.org and nyccivilrightshistory.org.

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