Justin Edgar
Film director, producer and writer, 104 films
Justin is an award-winning writer, director and producer who fights against the false assumption that disability is a niche topic.
As a teenager Justin was diagnosed as hard of hearing. Already in love with film, he often bunked school to go to the cinema. He gained a first class degree in film and began writing and directing Doctors for BBC1. At 26 he became the youngest ever director of a major UK feature film: Large was produced by Film Four and topped the UK video charts.
In 2004 Justin set up 104 Films, a training and production company specialising in disability and film. It creates authentic portrayals of disability on screen while training talented new disabled filmmakers and actors.
A British Independent Film Awards (BIFA) and British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) jury member, he directed the 2008 improvised comedy Special People about able-bodied misconceptions, which won a Royal Television Society award plus audience awards at film festivals in Berlin and Moscow. Justin’s online campaign #MakeFilmEqual resulted in his documentary about disability representation The Social Model, which was released last year to resounding acclaim.
He is currently writing a book about New Disability Film (Bloomsbury) and touring his exhibition Reasonable Adjustment on the disability rights movement.
Useful links
“When I was younger, I wish I knew that I was disabled. When most people think of disability, they think of either cultural deafness, mobility or visual impairment, yet the vast majority of disabled people have a non-visible disability. To me the able-bodied’s focus on visible disabilities medicalises disability and that is very damaging to the notion of the social model and can marginalise the experience of people like me”.