The organization, which frequently advocates for the casting of disabled actors and has conducted many studies documenting the lack of opportunity for disabled actors in film, released a statement on Wednesday condemning the movie (directed by Michael Mailer), which co-stars Demi Moore as the wife of an indicted businessman who cares for Baldwin’s character as part of a plea bargain.

“Alec Baldwin in Blind is just the latest example of treating disability as a costume,” said Jay Ruderman, the foundation’s president. “We no longer find it acceptable for white actors to portray black characters. Disability as a costume needs to also become universally unacceptable.”

The private philanthropic group, which was established in Boston in 2002 and is run by the Ruderman family, has also spoken out against depictions of disabled people in films such as Me Before You, which ends with the assisted suicide of its main character, who is paralysed.

“The upcoming release of the movie Me Before You presents a deeply troubling message to our society about people with disabilities,” Ruderman said in June 2016. “To the millions of people with significant disabilities currently leading fulfilling, rich lives, it posits that they are better off committing suicide.”

Last summer, the foundation released the Ruderman White Paper on Employment of Actors With Disabilities in Television, finding that 95% of disabled characters on television are played by able-bodied performers. At the time, Ruderman lambasted the industry for “systematically casting able-bodied actors portraying characters with disabilities”. Soon after, he and Danny Woodburn, another disabilities activist who portrayed Mickey Abbott on the sitcom Seinfeld, co-authored an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times shedding light on the cause.

Neither Mailer nor Baldwin has responded to the foundation’s claims.

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Source: Guardian UK

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Breathe, the directorial debut of Andy Serkis, has been selected as the opening film of this year’s BFI London film festival.

Starring Andrew Garfield and Claire Foy, Breathe is based on the true story of Robin Cavendish, who was diagnosed with polio while in Kenya and given months to live, only to survive and become an advocate for the rights of disabled people.

Foy plays Diana, Cavendish’s wife, who helped him come to terms with his illness, while Hugh Bonneville appears as scientist Teddy Hall, who aided Cavendish in developing a revolutionary wheelchair. Tom Hollander, Stephen Mangan and Diana Rigg also appear in the film.

The 61st BFI London film festival will take place from 4-15 October. Other films screening at the festival include a restored version of Shiraz, the 1928 silent film about a 17th-century princess who inspired the construction of the Taj Mahal.

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Source Guardian UK

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He made more than 40 feature films in a career spanning 60 years.

Many of his films – including Kanal, Man of Marble, Man of Iron and Katyn – were inspired by Poland’s turbulent wartime and communist history.

In 2000, Wajda was awarded an honorary Oscar for his contribution to world cinema.

‘Be alert to everything’

Wajda had been recently taken to hospital.

Unconfirmed reports say he died of lung failure.

Wajda’s last film Powidoki (Afterimage) tells the life story of the avant-garde painter Wladyslaw Strzeminski, who suffered under the post-war Stalinist government in Poland.

The director said he wanted to “warn against state intervention in art”.

The film was recently chosen as Poland’s official entry for the best foreign language film at the 2017 Oscars.

Four of Wajda’s earlier works had been nominated for that category. Man of Iron won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1981.

Wajda once said that “the good Lord gave the director two eyes – one to look into the camera, the other to be alert to everything that is going on around him.”

Wajda was born in 1926 in the north-eastern Polish town of Suwalki.

His father was among the victims of the Katyn massacre of Polish army officers by the Soviet Union in 1940.

Wajda tried to follow in his father’s footsteps, but was rejected by a military academy, and joined the Polish resistance in World War Two.

During World War Two, Wajda joined the Polish resistance. He later studied to be a painter, before entering the Lodz Film School.

In 1955, he made his feature film debut with Generation, set during the German occupation of Warsaw in World War Two. It was followed by Kanal, and Ashes and Diamonds, which form a trilogy about life in wartime Poland.

Some of his films found disfavour with the communist rulers of Poland because of their trenchant portraits of the wartime Warsaw Uprising and the suppression of the Solidarity movement in the 1980s.

It was only after the fall of communism in 1989 that he was able to make his film about Katyn.

“I never thought I would live to see the moment when Poland would be a free country,” Wajda said in a 2007 interview with the Associated Press.

“I thought I would die in that system. It was so surprising and so extraordinary that I lived to see freedom.”

Following Poland’s first free elections in 1990, he served for two years as a senator in the upper house of parliament.

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Source: BBC

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