Deaf Jam
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Images
Danny Biland
Wanda Nivol
Robert Haughton
Shiran Azhavian-Agin
Joshua Masas
Aneta Brodski
Website
Topics
Arts & Culture: Nonfiction, Poetry
Human Development: Social Exclusion, Youth
Human Rights: Disability
Information & Media: Freedom of Expression
Project Geography
US: National
International: Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, South America
Identity Niches
Disability Culture, Youth/Teen
Budget
Raised to date: $443,657.00
Estimate to complete: $57,400.00
Total Estimated Budget: $501,057.00
The budget numbers above are accurate as of 11/27/2009
Status
Post Production
Media Type
Video
Project End Use
Other: In addition to be submitted for a broadcast spot to one of the PBS strands by the Independent Television Service (ITVS), Deaf Jam will also be submitted for a theatrical run and to film festivals. After the film is completed, the film's website will be transformed into a poetry hub where aspiring deaf and hearing poets will be encouraged to collaborate.
Key Personnel
Judy Lieff
Director/Producer
Judy Lieff, Director, Producer is a filmmaker and teacher. Following her career as a professional dancer, she earned an M.F.A. in dance and experimental film/video from the California Institute of the Arts. Judy has produced, directed, and edited many short dance films that have garnered numerous awards and screened internationally. She began her relationship with the Deaf community through the making of an award winning experimental film, Duties of My Heart, featuring Terrylene Sacchetti, poet mentor for DeAf Jam. The film became a catalyst for four consecutive grants to teach video production workshops that Judy designed for deaf teens. In order to create a forum for her deaf students to dialogue with other hearing teens creating videos, she initiated and co-curated with the Museum of Radio and Television in Los Angeles, An Evening of Videos by Los Angeles Teens. Judy is a six time grant recipient for dance/media projects and has over ten years of experience working in the film industry in both production and post-production on commercials, industrials, shorts, and Electronic Press Kits for feature films. In 2000, Judy received a National Dance/Media fellowship from the Pew Charitable Trusts. In 2004 and 2007 she was awarded New York State Council on the Arts independent film grants for DeAf Jam.
Steve Zeitlin
Co-Producer
Steve Zeitlin, Co-Producer, served as co producer of From Mambo to Hip Hop, a documentary about the South Bronx funded by ITVS and broadcast on public television across the U.S. as part of the Voces series of Latino Public Broadcasting. He received his Ph.D. in folklore from the University of Pennsylvania, and is the director and cofounder of City Lore, an organization dedicated to the preservation of New York City's - and America's -living cultural heritage. He also co-directs the People'sPoetry Gathering, a national poetry festival in New York City. Steve Zeitlin has served as a regular commentator for the nationally syndicated radio shows, Crossroads and Artbeat, and The Next Big Thing, heard on public radio stations across the U.S. He also co-produced with NPR producer Dave Isay the storytelling series American Talkers for NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday and Morning Edition, and serves as an advisor to the StoryCorps project. Prior to arriving in New York, Steve Zeitlin served for eight years as a folklorist at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., and is coauthor of a number of award winning books on America's folk culture. He has also co-produced a number of award-winning film documentaries including How I Got Over; The Grand Generation; and Free Show Tonite on the traveling medicine shows of the l920s and 30s. His early documentaries were selected by Folkstreams.net for streaming online.
Claudia Raschke-Robinson
Director of Photography
Claudia Raschke-Robinson, an award-winning Cinematographer, has over ten years of experience working as a DP on a variety of productions, documentaries, features, television, and Broadway and Art installations. Among her feature films are Walking on The Sky, Kiss Me Guido, Francis, His & Hers, No Way Home and the Last Good Time. Notable feature documentaries include Mad Hot Ballroom, I Am Beautiful, Oscar nominated My Architect (add' DP), Oscar nominated Small Wonders (add'l DP), and Oscar nominated Sister Rose's Passion (add'l DP).
Television credits include Science & Kids ( Dragonfly TV), The Soul of A Man, Wim Wenders contribution to the 7-part series The Blues (PBS), Notes for my Daughter (ABC) and Monsters (FOX).
Outreach/Engagement Plan(s)
MISSION
DeAf Jam Outreach is a two year national initiative that aims to reach out to the deaf communities in the U.S. and beyond, revitalize the endangered art form of American Sign Language (ASL) poetry, and empower deaf youth. The goal is to cultivate communities of young ASL poets across the U.S. and link them with their hearing peers involved in the national poetry slam scene.
The Outreach plan supplements the film by providing viewers with additional information on the language, culture, and history of the Deaf. It transforms viewers from audience members to participants in an online contest and dialogue.
MULTIPLATFORM STRATEGY
Our multiplatform plan is designed to be both an extension of the broadcast and to stand alone with an unlimited lifespan.
COMPONENTS:
1) An educational packet consisting of a downloadable guide and four 5 minute clips to generate discussion in the classroom.
2) A Weekend conference at Gallaudet University (the premiere university for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing in the U.S.). The conference will bring together key consultants from the film and representatives from partnering organizations to develop a curriculum guide and distribution strategy. (There are schools for the Deaf in every state.)
3) Community Screenings and a Tour group to four deaf schools across the United States tentatively identified in the following cities: Indianapolis, IN; Austin, TX; Fremont, CA; Washington D.C. The locations for the schools were chosen based on previous involvement with DeAf Jam mentors and on their proximity to Spoken Word contacts through UrbanWord NYC, a partnering organization, and co-sponsor of the film.
4) Website –the site will be an ASL poetry hub and network where deaf and hearing poets can communicate and collaborate with each other.
Elements for the website include:
· An interactive Blog.
· Widgets relating to ASL poetry on the site.
· webcast and podcast of the monthly ASL Slam series that is currently held at the Bowery Poetry Club
· a montly contest for young ASL poets to upload ASL poems, with the winning poem to be featured on the web site. Eventually the contest will be open to spoken word submissions and deaf/hearing collaborations through Urbanword NYC.
TARGET AUDIENCE AND ENGAGEMENT
DeAf Jam Outreach is targeting three distinct audiences: (1) Deaf youth; (2) Hearing spoken word poets interested in ASL as a way of strengthening their performance styles, and connecting with young Deaf poets; and (3) Teachers of deaf and hard of hearing students who will utilize the documentary, the accompanying educational materials, and the interactive web site to inspire and motivate their students.
ORGANIZATIONAL PARTNERS
Confirmed - Urban Word NYC, a youth spoken word organization; Bowery Arts and Science, an organization providing a forum for emerging voices threatened with marginalization; City Lore, a folklore center whose mission is to foster New York's - and America's - living cultural heritage.
Potential - Gallaudet University, the world leader in liberal education and career development for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing undergraduate students; Quest: Arts for Everyone - Quest through Artsbridge develops partnerships between the disability and art communities; Dotsub, an internet company that has a tool enabling subtitling of videos on the web into and from any language.
Funders
| Name | Amount | Date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Independent Television Service | $251,297.00 | 09/01/2008 | |
| National Endowment for the Arts | $32,500.00 | 01/01/2008 | |
| New York State Council on the Arts | $18,550.00 | 08/01/2007 | |
| National Endowment for the Arts | $18,000.00 | 01/01/2007 | |
| National Endowment for the Arts | $50,000.00 | 01/15/2006 | |
| New York State Council on the Arts | $15,580.00 | 08/01/2005 | |
| Rockefeller Foundation | $55,602.00 | 07/01/2004 | |
| Individuals | $2,128.00 | 01/01/2001 |
Location
227 West 11 Street, #52
New York, NY, 10014
Short Synopsis
DeAf Jam— a documentary film where American Sign Language (ASL) meets Spoken Word. A group of New York City deaf teens reveal their passions, frustrations, and senses of humor as they discover ASL poetry - eventually stepping into the world of the youth poetry slams with their hearing peers.
Description/Treatment
DeAf Jam, a feature length documentary and cultural initiative, highlights the remarkable poetry and storytelling of an increasingly marginal community: the community of the Deaf. They perform their poems in an endangered “tongue”: American Sign Language (ASL). ASL is a three dimensional language dependent on body language,eye contact, and the location of the signer and the receiver. In this dramatic visual language, the poets use body language, rhythm, and movement to create a cinematic equivalent to oral poetry.
Filmed over a period of four years, the story begins at Lexington School for the Deaf, Jackson Heights, New York. Through auditions, eight deaf students are chosen to participate in a series of poetry workshops. The film traces their journey in and out of school as they discover and explore American Sign Language poetry with some of this nation's most acclaimed ASL poets, and then bring their poetry to their hearing peers at youth poetry slams and other spoken word events. With ties to rap and hip hop culture, National poetry slams for youth have been gaining momentum in the past few years but few, if any, deaf teens have ever been included in these contests. DeAf Jam chronicles young deaf poets entering these contests for the first time. Pitted against the triumphs of the poets and contributing to this bittersweet story, is a counter-narrative, which traces the increasing erosion of this indigenous art form in the face of technologies and the educational system “serving” to mainstream the Deaf into the hearing world.
In the film, the deaf poets use sign language, movement, and poetry not only to express themselves, but also to raise issues about disability and the future of sign language.
Characters come and go throughout the film as they discover and define their deaf identity through poetry. The focus of the film is not on what the deaf cannot do, but rather on what defines deaf culture – the language. “90% of deaf children are born to hearing parents.” -- from the book, For Hearing People Only by Matthew Moore and Linda Levitan. Most of the characters are born into families where sign language is not spoken and their most basic form of communicating their inner feelings is cut off. School becomes their home and refuge because it is the only environment where they are understood.
One of the highlights of the film is a collaboration that develops between a deaf poet from Lexington School and a hearing poet from Urban Word NYC, a grassroots non-profit organization that provides free, safe, uncensored and ongoing writing and performance opportunities for NYC teens. Without “speaking” each other’s language, they manage to navigate through the collaborative process both with and without an interpreter. Eventually, they create a hearing/deaf duet that metaphorically relates to the world around them based on the difference in their cultural backgrounds – Aneta, a Jewish/Israeli girl from a deaf family, and Tahani – a Muslim Palestinian girl from Brooklyn. The film chronicles their remarkable collaboration both in rehearsals and in dynamic performances at Gallaudet University, the Bowery Poetry Club, and opening ceremonies for the 2006 National Youth Slam competition.
Historically, education for the Deaf enforced oral communication and forbid signing. It was not until the 1960s that a"total communication" approach to education was accepted allowing the Deaf to use their native sign in the classroom. Signed poetry grew out of a tradition of playing with the language in Deaf clubs throughout the country, where deaf individuals and their families and friends would congregate for entertainment and to socialize. New forms of technology that improve hearing capabilities such as cochlear implants, as well as hand-held blackberry computers, and captioned television are changing the way the Deaf community interacts. Through stock footage and commentary by Deaf Studies scholars, the film weaves in the history of ASL poetry and its corresponding sociological context. Today, most of the Deaf clubs have shut down. It is becoming clear to many poets and "speakers" of ASL that their chosen mode for communicating their deepest thoughts is endangered.
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