'Crutch' doc featuring Pittsburgh native to be shown at local film festival
The local connections to the documentary “Crutch” make it fitting to open this year’s ReelAbilities Pittsburgh Film Festival.
Presented by Film Pittsburgh, ReelAbilities celebrates the lives and stories of people living with disabilities.
Pittsburgh native Bill Shannon is the subject of “Crutch,” co-directed by Sachi Cunningham, another Pittsburgh native. She is an associate professor of multimedia journalism at San Francisco State University. Twenty years in the making, the 93-minute film premiered via streaming in November at DOC NYC, a documentary film festival.
The movie takes viewers from Shannon’s childhood in Pittsburgh, when he was diagnosed with Legg-Calvé-Perthes disease — a rare, degenerative condition of the hip — to his achievements as a dance artist and skateboarder.
“For me, it’s my hometown and Bill’s hometown,” said Cunningham, who grew up in Highland Park. “It is an opportunity to share this hidden treasure that Pittsburgh has living in its midst that everyone doesn’t know about.”
The film will be shown at 7 p.m. Sept. 8 at Carnegie Museum of Art’s theater in Oakland. The festival runs through Sept. 12.
It also will be the first time the film will be shown in a theater, a delay caused by the pandemic.
“There is something special about watching a movie in a theater,” Cunningham said. “And I think there is more awareness of what having a disability might feel like because of the pandemic when people had to stay at home. We all lost something during that.”
The film also will be streamed on Discovery+ starting Oct. 14.
Cunningham is a filmmaker and photographer. She co-produced the documentary in addition to co-directing.
She attended Peabody High School in Pittsburgh with Shannon and knew him since childhood. She collaborated with writer and director Chandler Evans, known as Vayabobo, from Los Angeles to co-produce and co-direct the piece.
“I think people are still digesting this film,” Vayabobo said. “What ‘Crutch’ does with the disability narrative is turn the lens back on the audience to be like, ‘What is your assumption of people out and about with a disability?’ This film is forging new ground. Bill seems to be stoked for it to be shown in his hometown.”
Kathryn Spitz Cohan, executive director of Film Pittsburgh, has been following the process of “Crutch.”
“It’s so rare to see a film that includes 20 years of home video footage, so we really get an in-depth look at Bill Shannon’s life and work,” she said. “And he’s from Pittsburgh! He’s a boomeranger, just like me!”
Tickets are $15. They can be purchased online.
JoAnne Klimovich Harrop is a TribLive reporter covering the region's diverse culinary scene and unique homes. She writes features about interesting people. The Edward R. Murrow award-winning journalist began her career as a sports reporter. She has been with the Trib for 26 years and is the author of "A Daughter's Promise." She can be reached at jharrop@triblive.com.
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