The Toronto International Deaf Film and Arts Festival (TIDFAF) goal is to promote cultural diversity, educational awareness and the celebration of emerging "Deaf Cinema" through the visual medium.
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For almost two hundred years, the Portuguese education of the deaf was oralist, their natural language completely forbidden. Yet, in secret, sign language flourished. The deaf learned to use sign language spontaneously and discreetly to avoid repercussions. However, over time, sign language found growing value within research, education, and society. A committee of deaf people, parents and teachers of the deaf, eventually began a movement, resulting in the National Assembly’s1997 recognition of sign language. 10 YEARS OF PORTUGUESE SIGN LANGUAGE RECOGNITION, 1997-2007 (LÍNGUA GESTUAL PORTUGUESA, 10 ANOS DE RECONHECIMENTO 1997-2007) questions how this recognition has affected those who fought for it, and those they had hoped would benefit from it. While signing is no longer hidden, now an accepted language, acceptance has come with its own challenges. Portuguese language has slowly encroached on sign language, resulting in the loss of its strong visual characteristics. Training standards have diminished, ushering in less qualified Interpreters, including hearing interpreters with reduced skills. In the face of all these challenges many are asking, what the future holds? And will sign language survive it?
Portugese Sign Language, English Subtitles
A splendid Labrador, Nike, is found abandoned by a man named Hamlet. A tender friendship is formed that will join them for good or for evil in the land of Orden.
Italian Sign Language, Subtitles
Little Oana’s only way to survive is by begging strangers for charity. Desperate to stay warm she keeps her hands from freezing by using the language of the signs and a box of matches. Though they don’t understand her language, passersby’s find themselves deeply moved, especially a woman named Tulia. The flame in Oana’s hands reawakens her secret wish to become a mother, a profound wish that will stay in her heart forever…
Italian Sign Language, Subtitles
When your mother’s a mortician smiles are hard to come by especially for this 8 year old girl who has never experienced one. After wishing upon a shooting star, happiness arrives in the form of her worst phobia: an Italian singing clown! Who knew? Glee is an unusual and entertaining musical, created by an all deaf crew, including director, producer, and director of photography.
Subtitles
This remarkable documentary shares the harrowing and scarcely documented story of Anna van Dam, a deaf child who survived the Holocaust. Anna’s family was murdered shortly after entering the Nazi Camps, forcing her to rely on lip reading, her loyal cousin, and instinct s to make it out alive. Though the horror of the Holocaust is explored, Anna’s story goes beyond tragedy to explore the transcending power of love and family. A poignant account that has long been neglected, Anna’s Silent Struggle is not simply an important piece of deaf history but one that will take all viewers on a life-affirming journey.
ASL, Voice Over, subtitles.
What happens when two worlds collide? Friendship and possibly love. Olivia (Katarzyna Hadley) is deaf. Nathan (Sam Ross) is hearing. After an uncomfortable first meeting, the two spend an afternoon exploring bridges and each others very different worlds. As the day comes to an end will Nathan have learned to experience the world in a brand new way?
British sign language and English voice over, subtitles.
Young Danny is mourning the death of his beloved mother. He has distanced himself from his grief-stricken father and is being terrorized by two local bullies. Overwhelmed by sorrow and loneliness, his life begins to spiral out of control as the bullying escalates to brutality, leading him to an irreversible and desperate act. Loss and isolation is unflinchingly explored, this, paired with the final scene’s imagery, a poignant use of silence, and a moving performance by its lead Mason Hurley will leave audiences with a story they will not soon forget.
English Subtitles and British Sign Language
The song to this video is called ‘Evergreen’ by Will Young. Fletch@ performs by translating the words of a song into BSL (British Sign Language). She marries the sound of music with music to the eyes, transforming the music into a truly visual experience.
Film by Fletch@ Edited by Fletch@ & Angela Twigg
BSL
Sung by Christina Aguilera, The song’s self-affirming message—“I am beautiful/in every single way/and words can’t bring me down” is amplified and expanded through creative use of American Sign Language and motion graphics, becoming a powerful proclamation of Deaf well-being and pride, as well as a visible demonstration of the beauty of ASL as a medium for creative expression. By Directed by Ron Dans, D-PAN Deaf Performing Artists Network
ASL Subtitles
Sipho the Lion was created and presented at the World Federation of the Deaf in Madrid, Spain 2007. The animation played a huge role in South Africa’s winning bid to host the World Federation of the Deaf in Durban, 2011.
International Sign Language
Brightly colored and beautifully animated, “The Rubbish Monster,” is set in a squatter camp littered with trash. After a man carelessly casts away an empty cigarette box, the vast amount of litter in the camp suddenly fuses together, coming to life to create a gigantic humanoid rubbish monster. As it proceeds to attack the locals, quick thinking and conservation comes to the rescue.
Animation
An ASL storyteller, Monique Holt tells the story of Ch'ien-niang. Young Ch'ien-niang briefly leaves her family to venture on a new path that will change them all forever. By journey end Ch'ien-niang and her family will be forced to confront a great secret that has never been spoken of. Inspired by a story "Ch'ien-niang," Chen Xuanyou.
ASL
In What Are You... Deaf?, CJ Jones blends his unique style of visual imagery and storytelling. Combining voice, ASL and mime, along with recorded music and multi-media projections, Jones paints colorful, riveting pictures of his life experiences, revealing what it was like to grow up in a tough St. Louis neighborhood, in the shadow of his deaf golden gloves champion boxer dad and on through the challenges faced during his quest to make it as a comedian and an actor in Hollywood.
ASL, Voice Over, Subtitles
Something has happened to a young woman. Something she can’t remember. Every hour investigators force her to reenact the painful event she survived in order to ignite her memory. Before long she realizes that there is more to the story than she’s been told.
ASL ,Subtitles
A filmgoer finds himself magically transported to the world of silent films. There, he meets a starlet and learns to live in a world without sounds; a wonderful allegory about the intrinsic gifts of the deaf world.
Silent Film.
Valerie Clarke, a larger than life woman of a certain age and owner of a Bed and Breakfast, has made her first booking in over twenty years. No longer young and beautiful, Valerie’s isolated life has been devoted to caring for her large, imposing, and troubled son, Georgie. When a young handsome man arrives to rent the room, Valerie is instantly, and at times comically, awoken from her depressing existence. With the gusto of her youth she sets out to entice her guest, inviting him to a party. As the party turns into something darker, rage and family secrets threaten to destroy them all.
British Sign language, Subtitles
Recapturing the vibrant history of deaf theater was one of theatre director Ethan Sinnott’s goals. The other was to tell a story that explores the condition of deafness. The Making of Agamemnon documents Sinnott as he directs the drama using an all deaf cast and crew. A metaphor for the deaf world, Agamemnon, is a production the documentary's director Saldana and the cast relate to beyond the stage. An absorbing documentary where art meets life.
ASL, Subtitles
9/11 FEAR IN SILENCE: THE FORGOTTEN UNDERDOGS is a compelling documentary about Deaf and Hard of Hearing people who were the FIRST citizens to become shut out from outside communication and ‘left in the dark,’ and the LAST to receive access to critical information, or be delivered from danger on September 11, 2001.
ASL, Subtitles
A story of three woman who come to New York searching for the things that are missing in their lives. One lacks tenderness, one has lost her nerve, and the other can't understand how to move forward.
First time writer/director, Derek Scott, creates a film without a single word of dialogue.
This modern day Wizard of Oz, reveals it narrative through visual imagery woven together with a sound track of 6 songs.
This experimental film explores the interaction between a sensory-deprived subject and his sensory input. It relates Mangiardi’s experiences using bilateral cochlear implants and his struggles to bridge his identity between "Deaf" and "Hearing."
A bit of history: Luc Ledoux, a musician also a LSQ interpreter watched the clip & fell in love with it. He was inspired by the visual music (it was originally without audible sounds) and created and music suitable to the visual movements and beats.
Mixed with sign language and music from Montreal, Quebec
LISTEN is the story of one family's triumph over the obstacles of prejudice and technology to ensure that their profoundly deaf daughter will speak. LISTEN was written and directed by Kimby herself. It is the story of one family’s decision not to allow society to throw their daughter away. It is also a story of a Deaf woman who refuses to allow herself to fail.
SUBTITLES