White Nine Trailer

In the 1960s, three teenage boys, Joe, Christos, and Charlie, were paralyzed by spinal cord injuries. Back then, that usually meant a life locked away in an institution. Instead, they became friends, then activists, then pioneers.

They were there at the very beginning of Massachusetts’ independent living movement, fighting for the right of people with disabilities to live on their own terms, outside of institutions and inside society. That fight helped lay the groundwork for the civil rights protections that followed, all the way to the Americans with Disabilities Act.

White Nine, directed by Nilou Safinya, tells their story through archival footage, interviews, and animation. The film also makes the case that the work they started isn’t finished.

Lighting and framing the people who built a movement from the ground up, and who are STILL fighting, is the kind of job you simply don’t forget.