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Home Movies Hardly Silent: Unlocking Our Deaf Folklife Films

Online ISBN:
9780197663219
Print ISBN:
9780197663172
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
Book

Home Movies Hardly Silent: Unlocking Our Deaf Folklife Films

Matt Malzkuhn,
Matt Malzkuhn
Independent researcher
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Ted Supalla
Ted Supalla
Professor of Neurology, Linguistics and Psychology, Georgetown University
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Published online:
17 April 2025
Published in print:
4 July 2025
Online ISBN:
9780197663219
Print ISBN:
9780197663172
Publisher:
Oxford University Press

Abstract

This seminal book on Deaf-made home movies takes readers on a journey through the first fifty years of filmmaking (1925–1970s). It will show how the American Deaf community utilized silent film technology while overcoming its inherent spoken communication barrier through sign language. In this way, a wide range of cultural and literary content was invoked, illustrating the integrated values of both a minority community and the larger society in which they lived. Home movies and the visual nature of emerging cinema technology of the time enabled Deaf people, unlike those outside of their community, to capitalize on this novel technology wherein all cultural activities preserved and shared on film were naturally embedded with sign language. Therefore, the widely held belief that these home movies were silent only because they were without sound was debunked. Deaf people have managed to textualize their language using film technology, and it has become their oral history frozen in time in their exact forms. The importance of home movies for the Deaf community was fully recognized by the National Association of the Deaf, which funded the production of twenty-two films intended to preserve the literary traditions of the community and the formal language register. Views of the Deaf presented in home movies offer a stark contrast to their institutional life as typically depicted on film and validate the idea that films are indeed a superior method for documenting the Deaf community.

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