The Laughable is a Leeds-set experimental documentary that explores what is laughed at and who gets to laugh. Six disabled comedians perform on a bare sound stage. With no laugh track or live audience, the onus falls on cinema-goers to decide what is laughable in the collective viewing experience.
The Laughable proposes the joke as a kind of ‘technology’ for creating an in-group and an out-group. Working into archival silences in the manner of a contemporary folklore of disability, the project looks to histories of minor or genre cinema, such as educational and anthropological film, produced for distinct audiences. Working with the creative potential of accessibility tools such as audio description, transcribed speech and open captioning, the film plays with suspense, discomfort and comedic timing in performances recorded for an unknown future audience.
Premiered at Open Docs Film Festival, Belfast; also screened at Leeds International Film Festival.
