Film: Documentaries

Film is the only medium capable of capturing the full range of deaf expression, and documentary film and video in particular offer the capabilities to record, preserve, and represent Deaf culture. Instead of following the medical model and the entertainment media stereotypes of deaf people as unintelligent, unhappy, and otherwise disabled, documentaries instead address key issues within the community, such as language use, assistive technologies, and education. The role of documentaries within Deaf culture raises questions about the intentions behind their production, the central themes within the documentaries, the two tensions within these representations, the media institutions and their creations of documentary, and the roles of digital technologies on productions and protests.

Early innovations in documentary film focus on the recording and projecting of everyday events. While the Lumière brothers sent their portable cameras out into the world, Thomas Edison brought the world to his studios and recorded people doing such things as kissing, boxing, and sneezing. Among Edison’s early films is a recording of a deaf woman signing the “Star Spangled Banner,” made in 1902. Starting in 1910, this drive to record inspired the National Association for the Deaf to create a series of 18 films of people [Page 415]signing in attempts to preserve the language at a time when oralism proponents attempted to pass legislation prohibiting sign use in education. Under the guidance of George Veditz, the films featured people signing stories such as “The Irishman and the Flea” and “The Lady and the Cake,” song lyrics such as “Yankee Doodle,” and a speech such as “The Gettysburg Address.” Veditz himself signed in Preservation of the Sign Language (1913). Though only about half of these films survive, they provide the first visual records of sign language, and they provide insights into Deaf culture and its values at the time.

As much as documentary allows the recording and preserving of Deaf culture, documentary more so represents different aspects of Deaf culture, giving voice to the community and its concerns. Sound and Fury (2000) addresses the divisive issue of cochlear implants as two brothers—one hearing and one deaf—explore the decision whether to give these devices to their children. The heated arguments among the family and community members show the tensions surrounding assistive technologies, signing, education, and cultural preservation. Some documentaries focus on educational institutions, such as The School for the Deaf at the Alabama Institute, as in Frederick Wiseman’s Deaf (1986). Multiple documentaries explore the experience of what it means to be deaf within a particular society. In the Land of the Deaf (1992) offers diverse portraits of French people as they sign about their own experiences and as they attend school, start married life, and engage in other activities. Other documentaries offer more intimate portraits of these experiences through family members, both deaf and hearing. Hear and Now (2007) serves as a memoir for director Irene Taylor Brodsky as her 65-year-old parents get cochlear implants for the first time in their lives and the challenges they face in the year following. The youngest hearing child of two deaf parents, Melissa A. Gomez delves into her family’s secrets in Silent Music (2012).

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