INTELLIGENT LIVES, a documentary by award-winning filmmaker Dan Habib, has its Wyoming premiere at the Fox III Theater on January 8, 2019.
INTELLIGENT LIVES stars three pioneering young American adults with intellectual disabilities – Micah, Naieer, and Naomie – who challenge perceptions of intelligence as they navigate high school, college, and the workforce. Academy Award- winning actor and narrator Chris Cooper contextualizes the lives of these central characters through the emotional story of his son Jesse, as the film unpacks the shameful and ongoing track record of intelligence testing in the U.S.
“People with intellectual disabilities are the most segregated of all Americans,” Habib says. “Only 17 percent of students with intellectual disabilities are included in regular education. Just 40 percent will graduate from high school. And of the 6.5 million Americans with intellectual disability, barely 15 percent are employed.”
In Wyoming, the statistics are similar. In the year 2014, an estimated 20.9 percent (plus or minus 12.9 percentage points) of civilian non-institutionalized, men and women with a work limitation, aged 18-64 in Wyoming were employed.
In other words, 6,000 out of 28,000 (or about one in 5) civilian non-institutionalized, men and women with a work limitation, aged 18-64 in Wyoming were employed (Cornell University, 2018).
INTELLIGENT LIVES is a catalyst to transform the label of intellectual disability from a life sentence of isolation into a life of possibility for the most systematically segregated people in America.
