THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT (Digital Video, TRT: 30:00, 2005) is a half-hour documentary about a renegade Jerry's Kid named Mike Ervin. A Muscular Dystrophy Association poster child in the 1960s, today Mike is an outspoken disability rights activist who challenges the MDA 's representation of people with disabilities in its Labor Day telethon through his activist group, Jerry's Orphans.
THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT screened in disability film festivals in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Germany, India, Russia, Switzerland and the United States, as well as at the Gene Siskel Film Center and the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. It was purchased by Disability Studies programs at universities and broadcast on satellite TV. The film was distributed through an extensive outreach campaign in which DVDs and viewer discussion guides were given to disability rights activists around the country. They then held community screenings to spark local discussions of pity, charity, the representation of disability in the media, and disability activism.
Read about the issue and the film here.
This film was generously supported by The Paul Robeson Fund for Independent Media and the Illinois Arts Council.