the making of the tallest dwarf:
breaking new ground in participatory doc-making
(check back here for more about the ethics and ethos of our filmmaking process)
our advisory board: summer 2024
We developed THE TALLEST DWARF with the feedback of an advisory board we invited to come together to watch a later rough cut of the film. Comprised of actor Rance Nix, Bioethicist Joe Stramondo, medical historian Aimee Medieros, patient advocate Kristen DeAndrade, community leader and LP parent Olivia Lim and field-defining disability scholar Rosemarie Garland Thomson, this group brought their lived and professional expertise to the film.
This group helped us to better see and refine our film’s story in terms of medical intervention, the perspectives of parents of LP children, the history of growth hormone and the inner workings of community conversation around drugs are changing LP community. Thank you to SFFILM for generously hosting our board and the gold House fund for making this advisory board possible.
how we look workshops: 2022
As part of the making THE TALLEST DWARF, we convened a group of Little People (LPs) performers to collaborate in developing a series of short films.during workshops in NYC where we reflected on the history of images of little people. We did movement workshops and discussed our own experiences with how we have been seen medically, socially, and otherwise, and we conspired to reclaim the stories of forgotten historical figures: court dwarfs depicted in European renaissance paintings and on freakshow broadsides- aiming to bring our own stories to the screen. We then wrote scripts and shot short vignettes complete with sets, costumes, and a full crew.