Reid Davenport
Oakland, CA
Reid Davenport is a documentary filmmaker and co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Through My Lens, a non-profit with a mission to amplify voices of and issues related to people with disabilities. Through his film work, he strives to tell stories about people with disabilities from their perspective. Davenport was a 2017 TED Fellow, was named a 2020 Bay Area Video Coalition MediaMaker, and was listed as one of DOC NYC’s 40 Under 40 in 2020. His film awards include the Emerson Foundation Production Grant for his film RAMPED UP, the Artistic Visions Award at the Big Sky Documentary Festival for A Cerebral Game, and Best Short Documentary at the Awareness Film Festival for the film Wheelchair Diaries. I Didn’t See You There was selected for IFP Week in 2020. Davenport’s video podcast, Basic Able, was fully funded by The Henry Ford Foundation. He received a Master of Fine Arts in Documentary Film & Video from Stanford University.
Photo by Bret Hartman / TED
Film still from Reid Davenport’s I Didnt See You There.
Film still from Reid Davenport’s I Didnt See You There.
Film still from Reid Davenport’s I Didnt See You There.
Film still from Reid Davenport’s I Didnt See You There.
I Didn’t See You There
Reid Davenport is a documentary filmmaker who strives to tell stories about disability from a political perspective.
Artist BioSpurred by a circus tent that goes up outside his Oakland apartment, a disabled filmmaker connects the ostensibly antiquated institution of the Freak Show with his own life. Shot from a camera held by director Reid Davenport or mounted to his wheelchair, the film serves as an unequivocal rebuke to the norm of disabled people being seen and not heard. I Didn’t See You There expands on the tradition of point-of-view film toward a new aesthetic for disabled filmmakers, creating film that is disabled through the artist’s own embodiment.