Page 6 - 2021 Winter CMTA Report

Filmmaker

Crystal

Emery:

Energy in

Motion

and Spirit

BY MARCIA SEMMES

took the use of larly bad fall, her left hip slipped “Obstacles are those
her arms and out of place, requiring major
frightful things
CMT legs from surgery and landing her in a
writer/producer/filmmaker body cast for two months, an you see when you
Crystal Emery, but it can’t touch experience she calls “nothing take your eyes off
her indomitable spirit. “I refuse short of traumatizing.”
your goals.”
to be defined by the body I She walked more slowly
inhabit,” she says, adding, “As a after being liberated from the
deeply passionate and creative cast but continued to take dance renowned theater director Lloyd
individual, I am so much more classes and play softball. Her Richards (“The Piano Lesson”).
than a Black woman living with orthopedist said she needed She polished her craft under
a life-altering physical disability. more physical therapy, and her director Bill Duke (“A Rage in
I am energy in motion and physical therapist said she was Harlem”), then went on to earn
spirit first.” “lazy.” Faced with the doctors’ a master’s in media studies from
Crystal’s latest documentary, criticisms and lack of tangible The New School for Public
“The Deadliest Disease,” is about guidance, she eventually stopped Engagement.
the scourge of racism in health going to therapy altogether. Since then, Crystal has
care, with COVID-19 as Exhibit Crystal began to experience a produced socially conscious
A. She held a virtual screening slight drop foot in tenth grade storytelling that celebrates the
narrated by Soledad O’Brien in and by the end of high school, triumph of the human spirit on a
May 2020 and the film will be she couldn’t walk the 12 blocks variety of platforms. In addition
broadcast on American Public from high school to her job to “The Deadliest Disease,” her
Television in 2021. downtown. filmography includes “Black
Crystal grew up in New In 1981, after years of slow Women in Medicine,” both of
Haven, Connecticut, with a pas- decline, Crystal was diagnosed which she wrote, directed and
sion for acting. She wrote and with a form of CMT that affects produced. The latter has been
directed her first play in the fifth both her limbs and her respira- seen by 12 million people glob-
grade. In the sixth grade, she tory system. Once again, it ally. Her writing has appeared in
began falling without tripping. didn’t stop her—after earning numerous publications, includ-
While she intuited that some- a BA from the University of ing Time magazine and The
thing was seriously wrong, Connecticut, she began her pro- Huffington Post. Her published
everyone else wrote it off as fessional career in theater and works include the first two vol-
clumsiness. After one particu- film with an apprenticeship with umes of the Little Man children’s

6 THE CMTA REPORT WINTER 2021