Intelligent Lives - A Documentary

Intelligent Lives is a new documentary film by the award-winning producer/director Dan Habib set to be released in 2018. The film follows the lives of 3 individuals with disabilities whose lives would have much different outcomes if they had been born even as recently as 1970 - most likely by being institutionalized.

"Academy-Award winning actor Chris Cooper, the narrator of Intelligent Lives, unpacks the United States’ sordid history of intelligence testing, which led to people with intellectual disabilities carrying a clinical label of “moron,” “idiot,” or “feeble minded.”  The three central characters of Intelligent Lives — Micah Fialka-Feldman, Naomie Monplaisir, and Naieer Shaheed — would have been labeled this way had they been born in the first half of the 20th century. Their parents would have been counseled to send their children to live in an institution alongside hundreds or thousands of other people with disabilities. They might have been among the approximately 65,000 Americans forcibly sterilized in order to “improve the stock” of humanity during the U.S. eugenics movement. As recently as 1975, Micah, Naieer, and Naomie would not have had legal access to a public education."

See a preview of the film here and see a list of screenings here.

You can also follow along for updates on the FB page.