Duties of care: health, disability, and access in the screen industries Film Studies Speaker Series: Dr Leshu Torchin

This presentation maps out a research project in the making that investigates disability inclusion schemes within the UK screen industries, and specifically the new job of the Access Coordinator, introduced in 2021. Embedded at all stages of productions, the AC works to ensure access for D/deaf, disabled, and neurodivergent cast and crew. Although a result of significant campaigning amongst disability activists and artists, this development can also be understood within the context of recent initiatives in the film and television industry aimed at eliminating barriers to access, fostering inclusion, and promoting well-being and sustainability. Whilst providing an overview of this recent history and initiatives, this paper explores the uses of care as theoretical framework for understanding the current transformations in the screen industries, and their capacity to bring about change.

Bio: Leshu Torchin is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of St Andrews. Her research has centred on representation of genocide in film and the use of media in activism. She is the author of Creating the Witness: Documenting Genocide in Film, Video (2012) and the Internet and co-editor of and contributor to Film Festival Yearbook 4: Film Festivals and Activism (2012) and her work has appeared in Third Text, Film Quarterly, and The Routledge Companion to Cinema and Politics (2016). When she is not doing this, she studies the state of mockumentary and documentary in the age of fake news; for this reason, she has a chapter on the sequel to Borat appearing in the Oxford Handbook of American Documentary (forthcoming).