Picture This

What does it mean to be disabled and desirable?

In Picture This, a new documentary by Jari Osborne, we meet Andrew Gurza, a self-described “queer cripple” who has made it his mission to make sex and disability part of the public discourse. Andrew embraces his role as a poster boy for the cause with an honesty that is, in itself, a kind of striptease.

We follow Andrew as he plans the second edition of Justify My Love, a sex-positive play party that the international media was quick to call a “handicapped orgy” when it launched in Toronto the year before. Throughout the film, Andrew discusses desire with a candour that cuts through the polite and often hypocritical discourse surrounding disability. “I own all of it. All of the crippled parts of me.”

At the heart of the film is the uneasy dichotomy that disabled people face of feeling either invisible or like a freak show, especially with regards to their sexuality. With its insistent and unflinching gaze, Picture This invites us to see them for who they are.