Bafta has been accused of discrimination after refusing to screen a disabled film-maker’s documentary for its members at an official event.

The organisers of X’08, Europe’s largest disability film festival, had selected a film about a troupe of disabled performers that was shot by a director who has a paralysed arm. But they were told that a Hollywood comedy about a mentally ill man’s love for a mail-order sex doll would be a more suitable choice for the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. The joint event has now been cancelled.

On Sunday the academy presents its annual film awards ceremony in a starry event at the Royal Opera House. For the rest of the year it promotes and develops British film-making through events such as that which was to have taken place at Bafta’s Piccadilly headquarters, organised with the London Disability Arts Forum as part of X’08.

Two months in the planning, the first showing of The Last American Freak Show, scheduled for February 18, was billed as a chance to raise important issues. Richard Butchins, the director, shot the film one-handed, his left arm having been paralysed by polio when he was a child.

It is a road trip following a circus of self-proclaimed “freaks” on a tour of the US West Coast. The troupe includes a dwarf, “The Half Woman”, who was born with one small stump of a leg, and “Lobster Boy and Lobster Girl”, who were both born with fused fingers. The troupe, shown performing in bars, campuses and small theatres, speak movingly of their lives. Butchins had been hoping that the industry screening would help him to secure the funding he needs to finish the film, currently in its second rough-cut stage.

Last week Bafta vetoed the disability festival’s choice. Corinna Downing, head of events at Bafta, told Butchins that his film “created too many questions” and that she wanted something less challenging for her members. In an e-mail seen by The Times she proposed showing Lars and the Real Girl,a Hollywood comedy, starring nondisabled actors, about a small-town misfit’s deluded relationship with a doll. Ms Downing wrote: “It covers, albeit with some whimsicality, issues to do with mental illness.”

Last night Peter Kinkead, director of X’08, called Ms Downing’s suggestion “appalling”.

It was, Mr Kinkead said, even more shocking than her refusal to screen Butchins’s film, calling that decision “a typical example of hidden prejudice and politically correct gobbledygook.

“Has she discriminated against Richard and the performers in the film because he and they are disabled? Probably. It is probably subliminal discrimination, but that’s the whole point about prejudice. It is often unconscious but no less damaging for that,” he said.

“She appears to be making a judgment on behalf of Bafta members because she feels uncomfortable with The Last American Freak Show when she should be taking us as a guideline. This is a British disabled film-maker who’s gone out under his own finances and made a 90-minute film which we believe is pushing boundaries and deserves to be shown, but they are turning their nose up at it.

“It is an important film because it illustrates how disabled artists are claiming their identity in a more assertive way that can be uncomfortable for some people in the nondisabled world.”

A spokesman for Bafta said that the film’s “subject matter” was the core of the problem. Its rejection had been a result of a misunderstanding over the criteria for the joint event, which had now been postponed indefinitely. X’08 was still free to show the film on Bafta’s premises but not as part of a Bafta-sponsored event, he added.

X’08 have turned this offer down, calling it a “second-class screening”.

Butchins said of the “freak” troupe: “I went on the road with them for ten weeks because I was really intrigued. They do stuff about their own disabilities but in the burlesque tradition.

“People’s natural reaction is to recoil from deformity – to be repelled and fascinated. That’s why these people go on stage, because they are fed up with being stared at in the street.”

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