Sundance Film Festival: View from the Floor Directors Mindie Lind & Megan Griffiths on Bringing Their Animated Short to Life

The Curb

If there's a minor blessing that has emerged from the pandemic, it's in the way that film festivals have shifted and persisted with online options. As one of the leading film festivals in the world, the Sundance Film Festival continues to bring selections of their festival to global audiences via their online and in person screening events. The 2025 festival is underway, with online screenings taking place from January 30 - February 3.

I mention this as one of the values of being able to attend the festival remotely is that I can stay safe as a disabled, immunocompromised person. It also then means I can watch films like Mindie Lind and Megan Griffiths superb animated short View from the Floor. This five minute documentary tells Mindie's story as a musician, a writer, a director, and as someone who lives with disability.

Mindie doesn't have any legs, and while she gets around in a wheelchair, it's that view from the floor that she's forced to present on television when she becomes a guest on the Maury Povich show. With a comedic and open narration, Mindie takes viewers from her initial perspective of being invited on the show (this is in the era before 'who's your babies dad' reveals dominated the show) to the feeling she had when the producers asked her to go on stage without her wheelchair.

View from the Floor decisively and intimately unpacks the concept of inspiration porn, which leads to a further discussion about the exploitation of disabled folks, especially in relation to entertainment.

As co-directors, Mindie and Megan utilise the bright and expressive animation from Joe Garber to bring a sense of comedy and charm to Mindie's story, allowing non-disabled and disabled folk to understand how inspiration porn impacts everyone's lives.

In the following interview, Mindie and Megan talk about meeting through the late, great filmmaker Lynn Shelton, dealing with cat calls and more, the importance of stories about disability being able to reach a global audience, how they created the look and sound of the film, before Mindie closes the chat with an interesting fact about the person who played ET on set.

To help support Mindie and Megan in transforming View from the Floor into a feature film, visit ViewFromTheFloor.com. You can donate on that site, while also checking out the artwork and listen to Mindie's song as heard in the film.

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