A
Review of the 1999
5th
Deaf Film & TV Festival and the
‘Look
Out Art Exhibition’ - Review
Wolverhampton – the centre of the Universe for all things
Deaf at the moment – held, for the third year running, the Deaf
Film and Television Festival; the 5th Festival since 1994. As with most things in Wolverhampton,
it was a roaring success. The
whole three days of screenings, discussions and workshops were all booked
out with attendees for events coming from as distant places as Finland, Denmark
and London.
Channel 4 – the bete noir of disability per se – was
ever present and at the heart of the best event of the weekend; a session
called The New Deaf Way Forward.
The debate concerned a series or two coming to our TV screens in February
2001 aimed at 18 – 25 year olds made by a couple of non-deaf production
companies working in Partnership.
How one of them, Maverick, will reproduce the magic that won them awards
for Embarrassing Illnesses in relation to Deaf issues will definitely put the cat
among the pigeons. One suspects
that irony will be high on the agenda and if the National Deaf Childrens
Society can call
their touring vehicle The Listening Bus then Channel 4 can call their flagship Deaf
programme Pump Up The Volume.
Luckily, Wolverhampton Art Gallery had an excellent
complimentary exhibition on called Look Out: Art/Society/Politics – running until 11
November). Covering issues of
capitalist exploitation and cultural appropriation it linked well with the Deaf
festival and showed Wolverhampton to be at the heart of Disability (incl. Deaf)
issues and the practice of Cultural Imperialism. It had one of the most beautiful art works ever to include
an Invacar (soon to be gone from our roads). I recommend you catch the exhibition on tour in Liverpool
(Bluecoat Gallery), London (Pitshanger Manor Gallery) and Ipswich (Wolsey
Gallery), between now and March 2001.
The weekend was a great opportunity for many people to catch
up with old friends and enemies (events such as these always have a seething
sense of resentment from those ‘done against’ in the past). Thus, there was plenty of debate,
excitement and tension: the stuff of life in a flick of a wrist. The Deaf festival signed off with some
signed and subtitled blockbusters for the kids as a way of giving the local
British Sign Language students some live role models. Roll on the 6th Festival next year – I
can’t wait.
Paul Darke - 390 Words