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School of Disability Studies student Maria Teresa Larrain is a filmmaker.

Her latest film Shadow Girl is about a woman who lives with blindness.

Larrain is the blind woman.

While the film tells her story and how she lost her vision, Shadow Girl also highlights the plight and politics of blind street vendors in Larrain's native Chile. Larrain doesn't want to be defined by her blindness. She fights society's tendency to see her disability above everything else about her. It's one of the reasons the radio and television graduate returned to Ryerson for the disability studies program.

"The most important part of me is here," she says, clasping her hands over her heart. "In this program I have learned that my main disability is not caused by my blindness but by the many barriers society imposes on me. In this sense, I am often disabled but I am not a victim."

It's this fighting spirit that earned Larrain the Civitan International Foundation of Canada Citizenship Award during the School of Disability Studies summer institute. The institute is a two-week intensive at which the school runs three required courses parallel to each other. The Civitan award is given to two students entering the program who demonstrate the capacity to build good citizenship and make a difference in the world.

Arriving in Canada in 1976, Larrain made a life as a filmmaker and community developer. She worked as a legal aid employee, assisting Aboriginals and political refugees, and participated in the women's movement. Then she started to lose her sight. With her professional life deteriorating and faced with impending poverty, Larrain returned to Chile and discovered the story of the blind street vendors, who were denied permits by the government to sell their items in public.

Larrain works closely with her camera crew to get the shots she needs. With some vision, Larrain uses a magnifier to direct her team in taping the right scenes. What Larrain is trying to capture is the blind gaze - a different way of looking at the world, herself and others.

"This is my main challenge in this film. Not the fact that I am shooting with low vision," she said. "This is relevant because the blind gaze and that of disabled people in general, is not often realistically portrayed in mainstream media and in society.

With the film still in production, Larrain returned to Toronto and enrolled in the School of Disability Studies. Larrain accepts the challenges set before her but also understands the task at hand.

"Not only has my blindness entitled me to shoot this film but also my filmmaking experience. I am not an outsider but someone who has a similar experience to that of the characters whose lives I am trying to portray," she said.