EXCLUSIVE: Reid Davenport’s directorial debut I Didn’t See You There has been called a “must-see” and “first-person poetry in captivating motion, expressed with a singular, assured artistic voice.”
We have your first look at the documentary before it opens Friday at the new Firehouse Cinema @DCTV in New York. The award-winning film opens in Santa Monica, California on October 14 and at several locations in the Bay Area in November. I Didn’t See You There will make its broadcast premiere as part of the PBS series POV on January 9, 2023.
“As a visibly disabled person, filmmaker Reid Davenport sets out to make a film about how he sees the world, from either his wheelchair or his two feet, without having to be seen himself,” according to a description of the film. “The unexpected arrival of a circus tent outside his apartment in Oakland, CA leads him to consider the history and legacy of P.T. Barnum’s Freak Show and its lingering presence in his daily life in the form of gawking, lack of access, and other forms of ableism.”
The description continues, “Informed by his position in space, lower to the ground, Davenport captures indelible images, often abstracted into shapes and patterns separate from their meaning. But the circus tent looms in the background, and is reverberated by tangible on-screen interruptions, from unsolicited offers of help to careless blocking of ramps. Personal and unflinching, I Didn’t See You There forces the viewer to confront the spectacle and invisibility of disability.”
Davenport won the directing award for U.S. Documentary at the Sundance Film Festival, where I Didn’t See You There premiered last January. It went on to win the Grand Jury Award at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in Durham, North Carolina, and the Golden Gate Award at the San Francisco International Film Festival.
“I Didn’t See You There is an unapologetically disabled film in its aesthetics and its seeming unconventionality,” Davenport said in a Sundance “Meet the Artist” video. “When you experience I Didn’t See You There, I want you to imagine other ways of seeing.”
Davenport directed and shot the film, and Keith Wilson produced. Todd Chandler is the editor. Executive producers include Alysa Nahmias of production company AJNA Films; Bryn Mooser and Kathryn Everett of XTR; Dawn Bonder, Andy Hsieh, and Marci Wiseman.
Reid’s unique filmmaking approach is evident in the trailer. Watch it above.
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