DocuClub in May!
Our May DocuClub will take place on Wednesday, May 19, 7 p.m., at 92YTribeca, located at 200 Hudson Street, at Canal. (Take 1, A/C/E to Canal Street).
We will be showing a rough cut of "DeAf Jam" by Judy Lieff. The documentary traces the journey of five deaf teens from New York City as they discover and explore American Sign Language (ASL) poetry with some of this nation’s most acclaimed ASL poets, and then bring their poetry to their hearing peers at youth poetry slams and other spoken word events. Performing in ASL, a dramatic visual language, the poets use rhythm, movement and body language to create a cinematic equivalent to oral poetry. The poets use sign language and poetry also to raise issues about disability and the future of ASL. Pitted against the journey of the poets and contributing to this bittersweet story, is a counter-narrative, which traces the increasing erosion of this indigenous art form in the face of technologies and the educational system “serving” to mainstream the Deaf into the hearing world. One of the highlights of the film is a collaboration between a deaf Israeli poet and a hearing Palestinian poet. Without “speaking” each other’s language, they manage to navigate through the collaborative process both with and without an interpreter. Eventually, they create a hearing/deaf duet that metaphorically relates to the world around them. Watch a trailer of the film here: http://www.deafjam.org/trailer.html.
Director/Producer Judy Lieff is a dancer, filmmaker, and teacher. She began her relationship with the Deaf community through the making of an award-winning experimental film, "Duties of my Heart." The film became a catalyst for four consecutive grants to teach video production workshops she designed for deaf teens in Los Angeles. In 2000, Lieff received a National Dance/Media fellowship from the Pew Charitable Trusts. In 2004 and 2007, she was awarded a New York State Council on the Arts independent film grant for production on "DeAf Jam." In 2009, the film was awarded finishing funds from the Independent Television Service Open Call competition.
Steve Zeitlin, Co-producer, served as co-producer of "From Mambo to Hip Hop," a documentary about the South Bronx funded by ITVS and broadcast on public television across the U.S. as part of the Voces series of Latino Public Broadcasting. He received his Ph.D. in folklore from the University of Pennsylvania, and is the director and co-founder of City Lore, an organization dedicated to the preservation of New York City’s—and America’s—living cultural heritage.
Editor Keiko Deguchi cut award-winning documentary films such as Jeremiah Zagar’s "In a Dream," Linda Hattendorf’s "The Cats of Mirikitani," and John Valadez and Cristina Ibarra’s "The Last Conquistador." Her most recent film, "To Catch a Dollar: Muhammad Yunus Banks on America," was shown at Sundance Film Festival 2010. She is the recipient of the James Lyons Editing Award at Woodstock Film Festival in 2008.
Our moderator will be Doug Block, a is a multiple award-winning, New York-based documentary director, cameraman and producer. His films "The Heck With Hollywood" and "Home Page" have been released theatrically in the U.S., won awards at leading international film festivals and have been broadcast around the world. "51 Birch Street" was named one of the 10 Best Films of 2006 by a number of leading critics, including The New York Times, and was selected as one of the outstanding documentaries of the year by the National Board of Review. His latest film, "The Kids Grow Up," is about his relationship with his daughter and only child, Lucy, shot over a period of 18 years and focusing on her last year at home before she left for college. The film is set for an early Fall theatrical release and a later broadcast on HBO. Block is also founder and co-host of The D-Word, an online community for documentary filmmakers, which now has over 4,000 members from 80 countries.
We’ll announce our rough cut soon. Stay tuned!
Admission is free for current DocuClub members and $8 for non-members.
For this screening, only DocuClub members need to RSVP at docuclub@artsengine.net. Our previous screenings have sold out and although admission for non-members is on a first-come, first-serve basis, it is highly recommended that you purchase your tickets in advance via 92YTribeca.
Membership is an annual $50 and it includes free admission to all DocuClub events. It takes five minutes to join online:
http://www.artsengine.net/store/items/docuclub_membership_individual_rate
