Title:
Producer Zian Chavez | We Are The Most Beautiful People

Subtitle:
Unpacking A Film About Uniting Disabled Adult Voices Around The World

Transcript:

Alycia Anderson: Welcome to Pushing Forward with Alycia, a podcast that gives disability a voice. Each week we will explore topics like confidence, ambition, resilience, and finding success against all odds. We are creating a collective community that believes that all things are possible for all people. Open hearts, clear paths.

Let’s go.

Welcome back to Pushing Forward with Alycia. I’m Alycia Anderson. I wanna start this episode with a question. What if beauty wasn’t just skin deep? But instead it was a revolution. And who really gets to decide what beauty looks like in the first place anyways?

Our next amazing guest, Zian Chavez, is gonna help us explore this. She is a Spanish indigenous, queer, non-binary neurodiverse artist. Activist art therapist. I love that. My brother did that too for a while. She, they is a film producer and is redefining what beauty means for people with disabilities and all identities, literally across the globe.

She was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1993. We’ll dive into that a little bit and. She, they just produced a documentary called We Are The Beautiful People, and we’re gonna hear all about this groundbreaking social justice film that she’s taken around the world. Thank you so much for joining the podcast and sharing your beautiful story.

Welcome.

Zian Chavez: Hi. Thank you for having me, Alycia. So good to meet you. So the film is, We Are The Most Beautiful People, not just beautiful people.

Alycia Anderson: Oh, sorry.

Zian Chavez: It’s okay. But the most is really important. My intention of naming this, We Are The Most Beautiful People, adults with disabilities, is because that’s something I inherently believe that adults with disabilities are the most beautiful people in the world.

When I first came up with this title, it was 2021 and all around, well, I live in Portland, Oregon, and yes, there were a lot of movements happening during that time. Black Lives Matter, Stop Asian Hate, LGBTQI Plus and I was observing and recognizing that there was no disability movement.

Hey, what about us? We’re still here.

And I, at that moment was thinking about all these things and what was happening to me at the time was I was working as an art therapist in assisted living homes, and that job ended. During 2020, I was only working one day a week and it was online therapy.

And, my body couldn’t do more than that at the time. Living with multiple sclerosis and all of the other stuff that comes with that muscle spasticity, chronic pain, anxiety, depression, that stuff. Anyway, so all these movements were happening and I just was thinking about my own life and I was like, you know what, what has helped me in the past was I’ve worked with adults with disabilities, my adult career, and I always remember adults with disabilities inspiring me encouraging me to be the best I can be.

And so, I was like adults with disabilities are the most beautiful people. They’re so amazing. And, I’m gonna make a documentary about this because, I mean, first of all, why not? I can, there’s no limits to what we can do.

I have no background in film. Absolutely nothing in my past experience led me up to this, but I had the idea and, living with a disability for my experience has always been like your TED Talk. Is like the outsider saying, no, you can’t, you can’t do this, you can’t do that. And it’s like, watch me. Just watch.

And so, that’s where it kinda started.

I love that, that your advocacy and the inspiration for this beautiful movie called We Are The Most Beautiful People, and I Agree, was born in that same 2020-21 time when advocacy was coming out in every group besides ours. I think there was a lot of beautiful new advocacy born during those times from a disability standpoint, which is really incredible.

And that was actually for me too. I can relate to you on that. It w as the moment that I decided that it w was time to push my fear aside and bring our voices up too.

I love that this was born out of that moment ’cause it was powerful.

You were working with people with disabilities in your past professional life, was that pre or post diagnosis?

I love that you are a participant in the group, but also an ally and a believer in the possible of the past.

So can you talk about that just for a minute?

Yeah. I moved to Guam at an early age. I was 20 and I lived there for four years. I was diagnosed in 1993. And so as a kid I worked in restaurants and I started working with special ed in high school as an EA education assistant. And I can’t remember if that was pre Guam or post Guam, but it’s one of the reasons the film is dedicated to my maternal grandmother Matina Baca Contreras.

My grandmother was diagnosed with schizophrenia in the 1940s. She lived a very isolated life and people didn’t see her. They treated her terribly and made fun of her and called her names and the crazy person. And I witnessed this as a child and a young adult and she passed many years ago, but the film is dedicated to her.

So I knew disability from my lived experience. I had a great auntie with polio in a wheelchair, and I also witnessed that my family unit did not talk about disability and even my years with MS. And I had lived with MS for 32 years and so I knew this as a young kid. I witnessed that within my own family there was an us and then them.

And, now I have the opportunity as a producer of a disability documentary to say there is no us and them. There is only us. I’m very passionate about this topic.

Alycia Anderson: So let’s talk about the film a little bit and. Its message to the world. And also in that, how do you personally define beauty since it’s centered around we are the beautiful people. Can you talk about the film and kind of the messaging it brings and, and what defines beauty?

Zian Chavez: Yes. Yes. Absolutely. So our film challenges the notion of beauty and centers on the real lives of adults with disabilities. This film is for everyone. Disability can happen to anyone. It’s a part of being human. Most humans and animals at any point can experience disability in their lives.

What we can do is embrace our unique lived variances and treat everyone with dignity and respect and compassion and acceptance. In a social media driven culture, humankind faces superficial concept of beauty daily. We are flooded with unrealistic ideas of how one should look and act.

In our research. We have found inequities worldwide and our interviews support these inequities. Black and brown persons with disabilities are the most marginalized.

Our underlining theme, dismantles the concept of beauty and highlights strengths and qualities that humans encompass while raising awareness. What we found out after doing all these interviews around the world is that beautiful is an individual experience for everyone.

And so for me personally, it’s a feeling. It’s like the feeling when I see a giant redwood tree outside of San Francisco, it’s that, that makes a beautiful feeling. And so when I see the sunrise, I get a beautiful feeling. And it’s different across the world.

We have disability representation from around the world, including Ghana, India, Taiwan, Chile, the UK, and all parts of the US we have from Boston to Pittsburgh, Detroit, Washington DC, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, Oakland, the Bay Area, and Portland, Oregon.

And so, behind this film we want to show that we are not only beautiful, that we can change the world, we adults with disabilities.

One of the amazing humans in our film, Dessa Cosma, she’s the founder of Detroit Disability Power. She’s saying we have the tools for what it takes to lead, to be leaders because we know how to navigate. Because when the world tells us to go that way and we can’t go that way, we find ways to go another way.

I get the goosebumps saying that because it’s so true. I’m a therapist and I’ve done a lot of research on rewiring our brains, and I know that’s possible because, we do it as adults with disabilities. We know how to navigate.

Alycia Anderson: So I love all of that. That was very powerful. And a couple things that I would like to say that was beautiful for me. You said that beauty is a feeling and I love that definition description of what beauty is, because immediately when you said that, I felt what that means to me too.

And it isn’t a superficial thing, the feeling of beauty is this magnificent full body experience that you have. Like when you see a redwood tree or you’re at the ocean, or you see a piece of art, whatever it might be, and what that feeling translates to you.

I think that if we looked at and considered beauty to be more of a feeling than this superficial outer layer, it probably could change culture into a more positive, beautiful path. So I love that you just said that, number one.

Number two, I love that you embarked on this journey. Obviously you have many intersectional layers to your identity. I love that you are identifying with so many layers of them and you don’t leave one off the table. They’re all there.

I think that if we all did that as humans, that eventually we can relearn that we’re not all just white or black or purple or yellow or green or whatever. That there’s these different layers that we leave to the side because it’s just a lot. We are one.

I love that you took that intersectionality that seems to be very important in your own identity and went around the world to find intersectional identities to come together and into this one theme of this film to understand what it means globally.

That’s so incredible.

Zian Chavez: Thank you.

Alycia Anderson: You traveled around the world. What did you find? What was similar? What was different? Where was the coming together? Can you talk about that a little bit?

I love that you did this.

Zian Chavez: Yeah. So around the world, we found inequities across the board and in a nutshell, what we’re missing is kindness and compassion and that’s in regards to everyone, right? That’s a piece we’re missing, and the sad thing is the most underserved population is young girls of color with disabilities. They’re the most marginalized.

During the making of this film. It was awe inspiring and also at the same time so sad because, we were firsthand to observe the discrimination around the world.

But what I can say on this note is if we can unite adults with disabilities from around the world, if we can unite the world, then the world can learn from us.

And, I can say to someone in India with a disability, Hey, I love you. I see you, I hear you. And they say that back to me. And so, there’s, I see you over there, because we’re all the same. We’re all the same.

I wanna say it again, the world can learn a lot from people with disabilities, and I hope that is a message that is loud and clear.

Alycia Anderson: Yeah, I agree and I don’t know why it’s taken so long for those statements to even be absorbed in any type of way in our society.

And I agree, the more we come together as a community and share space and speak up and advocate and show up the best way we can in the moments that we can, we’re actively shifting perspective a hundred percent.

What was the most challenging part of creating this film? Was it the conversations? Was it the actual navigation? Talk to that a little bit.

Yeah. Well, it was to hear the stories that are unbelievable still.

Alycia Anderson: Can you share one?

Zian Chavez: Yeah, so one of our interviewees she is a doctor in psychology and she was at this university for like 12 years.

And they were having a celebration for everyone that’s been there for over 10 years a big party. She gets to this celebration and it’s on the third floor in a restaurant that had no elevator. So they were celebrating her existence at this university, and she could not even go to the celebration.

And so stories like that were really hard to hear.

Alycia Anderson: I’m assuming she was a wheelchair user.

Zian Chavez: She was, yeah. Sorry.

Alycia Anderson: And where were we in the world?

Zian Chavez: In the United States. In this day and age, ableism discrimination, it’s all still very valid and true and it sucks. It just really sucks.

Alycia Anderson: I think stories like that, that you’re showing within your film, share with the general public, the realities of it. I can’t tell you how many conversations I’ve had about, say, for instance being on an airplane and not being able to use the bathroom literally as a consumer and, able-bodied people around me, friends, even people that are close to me.

Wow. I had no idea that was even a thing.

Somehow these major inequities that are inhumane.

I can’t imagine that one able-bodied person that hasn’t had to, face a disability of any type would say, oh, I’m gonna buy that ticket and pay for it and it’s okay that I can’t use the bathroom or do basic things that we deserve as a human, right? Like to use the restroom.

So that’s why what you’re doing is so important is because that story of this girl.

Wow, you’re throwing a party for me, but you’re not even thinking that I won’t be able to enter the door to celebrate who I am.

Like that’s unbelievable, right? It’s actually unbelievable. Wow.

Zian Chavez: Yeah. It’s, yeah. You know, how it is. I know you know.

Alycia Anderson: And, I think just the impact of sharing those stories is there’s jaw dropping for a lot of people that haven’t been exposed or just haven’t had education on these topics. So I think especially through art and film, there’s such great avenues to learn and be exposed.

Zian Chavez: Mm-hmm.

Alycia Anderson: Can you talk about the art of healing and you working as an art therapist? Those themes must have translated to this film in trying to heal our culture of understanding through film in the same way.

That’s interesting that you say that.

So the director and editor of our film there is BA Short and they are an art therapist as well in Portland, Oregon. So we’re two art therapists, and a photographer. He’s, this Robert Lafady is our cinematographer, so we’re a crew of three. And we made this worldwide feature film. And, but art is integrated all throughout the film because of, because we are art therapists and as an artist I believe that art can change the world.

And so there’s a theme here that I want to change the world. I mean that’s not a secret. And anyone who knows me knows this. I’ve wanted to change the world since, I say when I came out, but not as coming out as queer, but coming out of the birth canal.

I mean, I came out as a non-binary little kid, and I always felt different from the world and from everyone and so, I’ve always wanted to change the world. Because people were mean, and people are calling mean names and I didn’t do anything. And I recognize this at an early age probably ’cause I was different.

Mm-hmm.

Zian Chavez: Yeah.

Alycia Anderson: So hopes for the film, and where can we enjoy it?

Zian Chavez: Okay. So we were in the film festival circuit in 2024. We won a lot of awards and laurels. This year we tweaked the film to make it even better. So we have something really powerful and special. We are in the talks with, a film distribution agency, we’re gonna be able to stream it worldwide and that’s gonna be coming down the pipeline pretty soon.

I can’t say ’cause we don’t know yet, but we are just asking people to please follow us on our social medias at We Are The Most Beautiful People on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.

And so it will be streaming worldwide very soon.

And, we got accepted to a film festival called LA Liftoff, and we’re still waiting to hear about that final spot.

And then we might be in the Portland Film Festival in October, but if people can just stay tuned on our socials and then you’ll be able to see it.

Alycia Anderson: I love it. Yeah. Congratulations on being so creative in your advocacy. I love it.

So we end the show with the pushing forward moment. I did warn you about that before we started.

Our pushing forward moments are like mantras, something you live by, something you can inspire our community with to go out and take on the world in their own way, but I’m gonna add an extra layer to yours ’cause you’re an advocate and you’re passionate about the things that you do.

Not that we all aren’t, but you’ve got a little extra and I like that a lot about you.

What is your pushing forward moment, your call to action to challenge ableism and broaden this concept of beauty being a feeling?

Zian Chavez: Yeah. Oh, that’s nice. I say at the end of the film, and I say it’s okay to be different and it’s okay to be your true, authentic, beautiful self. That is our strength. And you said it in your TED talk about stronger together, like we said earlier about uniting the world, adults with disabilities, but even within our United States, we have to, as a disability community, it’s important that we come together.

And so that’s where I wanna just kind of say, it like in the film, it’s okay to be different. It’s okay to be your true, authentic, beautiful self, and I wanna end with, my name is Zian and I love you.

That’s been my line since I don’t know how many years . I start the film with that and I end with that because I think love is something that will always win and love can be our conduit to say, yes we can and we can do this together.

Alycia Anderson: Absolutely beautiful. And I am Alycia, and I love you too. I think that is so beautiful.

Thank you so much for sharing space with us today. This is really a beautiful conversation. So unique. You’re so talented and I can’t wait to see where this film goes and where your career is gonna go with all of these amazing pieces of work that you’re creating.

Thank you for gifting your talents to the world and to our community.

Friends moving forward for life. It’s so nice to get to know you.

To our community, Zian, and I love you as well, and we’re so grateful for you to show up today. This has been Pushing Forward with Alycia and Zian, and that is literally how we roll on this podcast.

We will see you next week.