‘Coming Out’ is a fantastic short film signed in BSL (British Sign Language) with subtitles and a great twist at the end.
The premiere of this film was at last January’s London Deaf Film Festival. The film went on to win a Clin d’Oeil European Video Award in Paris, and last weekend won best foreign film voted by the audience at the Viittomakielinen filmifestivaali, a deaf film festival in Finland.- Via Grumpy Old Deafies
I’d love to know what you think of it…
(Length of film: 6 minutes)
Temma, my 18 yo daughter’s response was that this video is funny & communicates how deafness is ignored & considered a dirty thing to be hidden. I think it’s great in that it does the latter & seeks to use the metaphor of homosexuality to do this. While it could have been a tighter script (as a writer, I can’t help but notice) with shorter sharper scenes, I think it’s really clever & worth watching.
oh I’m so glad you watched it :)
the main reason I posted it is because I think it’s a clever way of highlighting a major truth about sign language. Many hearing parents are in denial that their children are deaf.
Also it’s such a beautiful language.
I spent almost ten years working as an Auslan (Aus sign language) interpreter in Melbourne and Sydney and I do miss it a lot. My skills have slipped too unfortunately.
In any case, I’ve been getting back into doing some research on deafness and UX lately, so this isn’t the last post i’ll make on the topic I’d say :)
I’ve always thought it would be so cool to know sign language. I like learning new languages anyway and I think I’m drawn like a little boy to the idea of communicating with other people in like a secret code in front of other people and they don’t know what I’m saying. :)
I know there’s a few different sign language systems, if there was one that was used commonly through multiple countries (maybe there is, I have no clue) that would be really cool, almost like a universal language. Learn one language and know how to communicate with many cultures and people at once.
Hi Jeremy
Which country do you live in? some countries have similar sign languages e.g. England, Australia and NZ. I know some Asian countries use an American based sign language and I think Canada does too.
I like that they’re mostly different, it makes things interesting.
Learning about the deaf community and how to sign was life changing for me…
Why don’t you think about going to do an evening class to see if you like it?
I’m from the United States, I’m not sure what system or systems we use here, I seem to remember discussion on 2 different ones but I can’t remember what they are off the top of my head.
I’ll have to look into the class thing, that would be really interesting, I’ve been told that studying another language enhances understanding of your own language. I took a college Japanese class awhile back and just from that I would say that’s true.
Ah, it occurred to me I didn’t actually comment on the video itself. I thought it was really interesting, I love the flow of the sign language, it’s really elegant looking, people who know it well make it seem so effortless.
Hi Jeremy,
Ah ASL. You know, any of the books I recommended on the ALA article would be really good for you. Seeing voices is the first book about deafness I ever read and is the one that motivated me to learn Auslan.
I highly recommend it. The others are great to though. Let me know if you end up reading one :)