The Ability Exchange

This is a wonderful film. It should be required watching for all of society. People with disabilities need to be treated with respect and this documentary film shows the amazing connections that can happen between individuals. We all have so much to learn from one another. This film provides a heartwarming and bittersweet exploration to how disability affects all and what the future can hold as people like Professor Goldstein continues to teach undergraduates about the history of disability. Bravo to Bing and the class. This is a beautiful film of hope and resilience. It is excellent for teacher training, a lesson in empathy to show to today's youth or for anyone who wants to find out more about what it's like to live with a physical disability. Every engineering school should have a class like this. This is a must- see!

The Ability Exchange is a powerful documentary that follows NYU Polytechnic's innovative Disability Studies Course. The film is a phenomenally nuanced journey that in unafraid to confront uncomfortable situations. Director Bing Wang questions the ever present ableism in our world through humor and honesty and challenges the perceptions we have of "normalcy". The Ability Exchange gives voices to a community that is more often than not silenced and weaves together beautifully human stories. This is a movie about communication and making human connections and what we desire most—being understood.

This is a phenomenal movie about an extremely important subject. The Ability Exchange shows an innovative teacher working with engineering students, exposing them to people with disabilities in order to help them understand that all people are human beings in an attempt to break through barriers. Through the course of the movie you see how these students change in their understanding of people who are "different" from them. The movie is moving without being sentimental. It shows real people , with real emotions and experiences.

The director has done an incredible job of allowing all the people to speak for themselves. The movie is beautifully edited, music is subtle and moving and all in all a masterpiece in filmmaking.

"The Ability Exchange," mirroring its subjects, approaches the viewer cordially, like a new classmate destined to become a friend. This vérité documentary observes semester-long projects undertaken by NYU students and their consultants with cerebral palsy as they team up to make films that will uncover different truths about the perceptions of "ability" and "normalcy."

The film offers up several moments of poignant discomfort as we watch the project teams maneuver through taboo topics and well-meaning missteps in communication. But these moments, when absorbed into the context of the whole film, remind us that all of our strengths shine brightest when we are engaged in a mutual project and our shortcomings serve as unique portals through which to view our common desire to understand and be understood. Most importantly, throughout Mr. Wang's film, the audience is uniquely positioned to experience and analyze how people relate to each other and relish in the joy of genuine connection.

This film speaks with a loving, patient voice and leaves you hopeful for a more loving, patient future.

The documentary is excellent because it presents life as it is. A semester long school project that becomes so much more than that. Lessons learned, serious conversations and topics, genuine laughs, mistakes and wisdom. It is all there. Its captured in the most natural way possible - as to give us the feel that the camera is not there. It presents reality as it is. Unaltered and unfiltered. An insight into disability, what it really is, and a suggestion of the real issue surrounding it. A raw exposure of humans, their insecurities, their pride, their awkwardness in new situations and when meeting new people. Different personalities come to play, they evolve, grow and learn. Something is achieved at the end, something that only can be experienced first-hand but can be felt through the screen. A 'must see' in America and the world.