Slamdance Returns to SLC with Loud Love for Unstoppable Filmmakers

Sundry refreshments awaited the 100 or so attendees of last Tuesday’s private reception at Broadway Centre Cinemas. Faces new and familiar greeted each other with introductions, hugs and sign language. After an hour of excited chatter and red carpet photos, the crowd was ushered through a theater door under a marquee which read “Unstoppable.”

Such was the premiere of Slamdance‘s Unstoppable: On The Road, a touring film festival destined for arthouses in Chicago, Miami, New York and more. Though the Slamdance Film Festival has been programming the annual showcase of films made by filmmakers with visible and non-visible disabilities since 2020, this is the first time they’re taking it on the road. While Slamdance now calls Los Angeles home, president and co-founder Peter Baxter will be the first to tell you there was no better place to kick things off than back in SLC through partnership with the Salt Lake Film Society (SLFS).

“I’ve known Tori [Baker, CEO of SLFS] for a long time, and she came to me and said, ‘You know what, I’ve done this study of arthouses in the United States and I’ve seen that films made by creators with visible and non-visible are underrepresented in arthouses. I want to make sure we show it at the Society. Would you do a program for us?’ I said I sure would,” Baker explains. “Then of course I had to take it a step further. I said, ‘Tori, why don’t we expand this to other arthouses in the United States?'”

“I refuse to infantilize the audience.”

Unstoppable: On The Road‘s programming offers each venue the opportunity to select either a short and feature to screen for one night, or a range of projects to show across a few days. For opening night at SLFS, our audience was treated to screenings of View From the Floor, an animated biographical short film narrated by subject Mindie Lind and directed by Megan Griffiths, and Loud Love, a feature documentary following gay and deaf couple Alan Roth and Brian Blais as they meet new challenges in raising their increasingly rambunctious five-year-old children.

Director Bing Wang met the family by chance after enrolling in a sign language class through their learning center to familiarize himself before making a film about CODAs (Children of Deaf Adults). He quickly realized he’d found his subjects in Alan, Brian and their children Seth and Sela Roth. Wang and his producer Delbert A. Whetter made the right call in focusing on how Alan and Brian differ from one another because it’s simultaneously obvious how well they work together — both professionally and as fathers. The film is at its most engaging, however, when it explores Alan’s relationship with his parents and his childhood. As the family of four visits Alan’s parents in Florida for Christmas, Wang cuts between day-to-day family dynamics and talking head interviews with the parents. Arleen Roth, Alan’s mom, is particularly fascinating due to her unapologetic feelings toward their choice to raise Alan (who is oral and uses a hearing aid) outside of and away from deaf culture. Alan expresses how hard this made things at times, and even his father says he regrets never learning sign language to make communicating with Alan and Brian easier and more meaningful. Yet Arleen cedes no such remorse. 

Though in the post-screening Q&A Wang alluded to more antagonistic behavior being removed upon family request, he explained how important he felt it was to keep this aspect of Arleen’s relationship to Roth in the film. “I refuse to infantilize the audience,” he explains. Thus, the audience is left to make this judgment on their own, and it’s for all the better. Overall, the film expresses itself incredibly well by highlighting how relatable Roth and Blais’ marriage is and how the challenges we face as parents, partners and people remain the same across all labels.

Whetter, a deaf man himself, expounded upon the film’s relatability in the Q&A: “We get a lot of deaf individuals who say, ‘Yes, that’s my story.'” Anecdotes like these are exactly what Unstoppable: On The Road aims to prompt, and precisely why SLFS hopes to continue hosting in the years ahead.

“As we were gearing up for Unstoppable, my main goal was to create a space where the larger disability community could come together and connect,” says Maddie Jones, Executive Assistant to the CEO at SLFS. “The disability community here is massive, and the festival, especially the opening night reception, really became a place to build that community. We hope to continue hosting the Unstoppable Film Festival every year and, as it grows, use it as a way to keep strengthening and expanding connections within and into the disability community here.”

“We get a lot of deaf individuals who say, ‘Yes, that’s my story.'”

This year’s Unstoppable: On The Road has already left Salt Lake City as of June 13. For those in the Salt Lake community who are eager to support filmmakers with disabilities, opportunities are admittedly limited — but not entirely absent. Jones explains, “Unfortunately, there isn’t currently a program in Salt Lake City specifically supporting filmmakers with disabilities. A few of us involved with this festival have started talking about what a program like that could look like. Right now, the world of disabled filmmakers is still incredibly small, so supporting any of our work — whether it’s on streaming platforms or the occasional disability-centered film that makes it into theaters (most likely at Broadway Centre Cinemas) — helps demonstrate that disability art deserves our attention. That support makes a real difference, not just for individual artists, but for the entire community.”

Read more Slamdance coverage here:
“On Behalf of Non-Speakers”: Makayla’s Voice Premieres at Slamdance 2024
A Coming-of-Old-Age Film: An Interview with the Director of Lan’s Garden