equality and justice: January 2007 Archives

Coming in March to a PBS station near you:

Quoted in full from an email by the Justice for All moderator and passed along...thanks!

PBS Documentary Explores 200 Years of Deaf Life in America

"Through Deaf Eyes," a two-hour PBS documentary exploring nearly
200 years of Deaf life in America, will air early next year. The
film was inspired by the exhibition, "History Through Deaf Eyes,"
curated by Jack R. Gannon of Gallaudet University.

The documentary will air nationally on PBS on Wednesday, March 21
at 9 p.m. ET (check local listings).

The film presents the shared experiences of American history
family life, education, work, and community connections - from the
perspective of deaf citizens. Interviews include community
leaders, historians, and deaf Americans with diverse views on
language use, technology and identity.

Bringing a Deaf cinematic lens to the film are six artistic works
by Deaf media artists and filmmakers: Wayne Betts, Renee Visco,
Tracey Salaway, Kimby Caplan, Arthur Luhn, and Adrean Mangiardi.

Poignant, sometimes humorous, these films draw on the media
artists' own lives and are woven throughout the documentary. But
the core of the film remains the larger story of Deaf life in
America -- a story of conflicts, prejudice and affirmation that
reaches the heart of what it means to be human.

Major funding for "Through Deaf Eyes" is provided by the National
Endowment for the Humanities, Corporation for Public Broadcasting,
PBS, The Annenberg Foundation and the National Endowment for the
Arts. Private individuals have also contributed to the funding of
this project. The extensive outreach campaign is funded in part
by Sign Language Associates. Outreach partners are the National
Association for the Deaf, Gallaudet University, the National
Technical Institute for the Deaf at Rochester Institute of
Technology, and California State University-Northridge. As part
of the outreach campaign, numerous local organizations, some in
association with their public television stations, will mount
events and discussions exploring the issues raised in the film.

A comprehensive Web site, found at http://www.pbs.org,
accompanies the film. The site includes interviews with the deaf
filmmakers whose work is featured in the documentary, while also
inviting viewers to submit their own stories, photographs, and
films. These will become part of the archival collection of
Gallaudet University. A companion book is being published by
Gallaudet University Press.

Source: PBS
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/soundandfury/culture/deafhistory.html

This sentiment haunts The Jacket, a film about consciousness. Although no plausible physical mechanism is provided for time travel, we witness the lead character adapt proactively to the most improbable scenario: discovering himself in a future timespace in which he has already died. Instead of engaging a futile struggle to avoid what has been foreordained, Jack uses the forays into the future to identify, strategize, and act to change elements in his present that influence the unfolding of time for others. The physical fact of his own death cannot be undetermined, but the trajectories of others’ lives might be shifted just enough to lead to (at least potentially) more satisfactory, less painful unfoldings.

“I know the difference between reality and delusion,” Jack asserts. “I’m not delusional, the real events that have happened to me are crazy.” ("Quote" based on memory.)

The craziness of real events is a theme in the other film I saw last week, Children of Men. Although it seems too far-fetched to be believed that all women might become infertile more-or-less simultaneously, that “reality” serves as the backdrop for the dissolution of society in the face of events too dramatic (apparently) to be managed on the human scale. While viewing the movie, which depicts an escalation of immigrant-baiting and an intensifying police state in England, I kept thinking about institutional and interactional fallout from global warming. Given the existing gaps among socioeconomic classes – globally (between countries and regions) as well as internal to national populations – the spread of anomie seems quite likely. Such chaos can conceivably be countered by cumulative acts of individual and collective consciousness such as that demonstrated by Jack as he moves between wearing and not wearing the jacket, back-and-forth in timespace, discovering a way to maintain the continuity of his be-ing.

The combined image of possibility presented by juxtaposing the two movies reminds me of Shemaya, who recently gave me her take on global warming. “It’s dramatic change,” she said, “just like disability. You’re going along, having your life, and suddenly things change drastically.” Dramatic change requires adaptation and issues of survival. I agree with the parallel of the microsocial experience of disability with the macrosocial event of weather-disrupted institutional systems; the distinction of scale seems relevant. The challenges that confront the newly disabled to retain, maintain, and reconstruct a social world fit to live in are magnified by the scale of cooperation required to shift major global societal flows.

...but it is happening somewhere. Look carefully at the poster.

What is "it"?

To see more images, go to http://www.walker.ag, pick your language, then "work", then Amnesty International. There are posters in China, Iraq, Liberia, Myanmar, and Sudan.

Shared via email from David, thanks.