Paper short abstract:

Film & media have been in processes of nationbuilding but also as a voice of dissent or critique against the power & authority of the State. Participatory filmmaking with deaf filmmakers creates opportunities to craft alternatives to established [hearing] norms, visualities & filmmaking traditions.

Paper long abstract:

Film and media have been used to great effect in processes of nation-building but equally so as a voice of dissent and critique against the power and authority of the State. In practices of film-making shared conventions for visual expression are derived from a process and history of image-making that has been dominated by negotiations and exchanges between different [hearing] traditions. Arguably, films and image-making are geared towards the hearing norm and has been little influenced by deaf film-makers. This paper asks what a deaf film-making, anchored in the visual aesthetics that are shared by deaf communities, might look like and how it offers an alternative visual rhetoric that challenges and makes inroads into disrupting hearing norms. It is not about distinguishing set characteristics of what deaf visuality is, or is not, nor about how it differs categorically from hearing visual aesthetics and repertoires, but is about asking the question: can film-making based on deaf ways of seeing and their visual repertoires disrupt and subvert the hearing visualities and film-making traditions established over the centuries? Do films by deaf film-makers present alternatives to mainstream discourses that support normative views of capabilities and question the establish power structures and authorities? Experimenting with participatory film-making as a part of ethnographic practice and consciously challenging expressive norms within film-making and its genres holds the potential to further critique state-sanctioned media and add to the already established body of disruptive, subversive cinema that questions and promotes difference rather than conforming to comfortable norms.