Watch: Pitch for a film featuring a deaf character (and help vote for it to win funding!)

A month or two ago, we found a video pitch for a film featuring a deaf character by an up and coming director called Amelia Hassard, which has glimpses of ASL is helpfully subtitled for deaf viewers.

The deadline to support her project is tomorrow, so if you like it, just click on the following link, then ‘like’ the page, then you can vote for the project and help it get made! The link is: http://bit.ly/128jDEa.

The video pitch is below, and below that, Amelia tells us about where the inspiration for her story came from. If successful, she would like to do further research with a young deaf person and work with a young deaf actor. We think the final film could be very interesting indeed…

Interview with Amelia:

It is unsurprising that there is such a large number of actors who are deaf, as sign language lends itself very well to theatrical communication. Despite this, I only found very niche societies promoting deaf performers and very few characters who are deaf in mainstream cinema, which is really surprising.”

One of my favourite books is Carson McCullers’, ‘The Heart is a Lonely Hunter’, which focuses on the relationships between a deaf man and several hearing characters, who see him as a blank canvas to unload secrets onto, manipulate and idolise. It really inspired me to look at the idea of misunderstanding due to projection, highlighted when someone is regarded as fundamentally different because of a disability. In my film, the deaf protagonist’s manner of looking at the world is also affected by his deafness, and so the film will mainly use the Point Of View shot.

I’m in my final year of a physics degree in London, so my filmmaking has been done on the fly since school, and I have been working as a camera assistant on sets. I want to be a directory of photography, so I spend a lot of my time making little visually driven narratives (such as: https://vimeo.com/61441441).

I’ve been interested in deaf culture and sign language since I was really young, starting out as an interest in linguistics and communication as I have no personal relationship with anyone who is deaf. I would like to further my research by talking to a young person who is deaf, and I think it would be really important to film with deaf actor.

scholarship to the Sarah Lawrence International Film Institute of New York, where I would produce the film this summer. I’m currently in second place, so every vote counts!