Community Cinema leapt a step forward this season, thanks to a new partnership with the Belcourt Theatre. As part of the Belcourt’s new education and engagement program, we’re bringing films, including several Community Cinema offerings, to after-school programs across the city. We started in September, screening Abigail Disney’s Women, War & Peace: Pray the Devil Back to Hell to middle school students at the Martha O’Bryan Center in East Nashville. Penny Mitchell, Middle School Coordinator at Martha O’Bryan, leads fantastic, age-appropriate discussions with her 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th graders, who are eager to learn about the world outside their community. Penny has a knack for making the film’s material – women in Liberia protesting the civil war there – relevant to the lives of these students. She talked with students about life in African countries, which provides an excellent opportunity for American-born kids to better understand situations some of their Somali classmates faced before coming to Nashville. The film presented a chance to discuss concepts of war, peace, and democracy – and the kids got it.
On October 10 and 12, we followed up at Martha O’Bryan with Deaf Jam, which airs Wednesday, November 9, at 9 p.m. on NPT. Deaf Jam, a profile of deaf high school students in New York City who use American Sign Language to perform poetry, was a hit with the middle school students, who were excited to learn more about deaf culture and the poets they saw onscreen. Michelle Muldoon from Hearing Bridges, a local nonprofit that unites the deaf and hearing communities, came to Martha O’Bryan to teach students some basic sign language and talk to them about how to approach deaf people they might meet.
That same week, the Belcourt and Community Cinema also presented an after-school screening of Deaf Jam at Hearing Bridges. About 25 deaf children, teens and adults tuned in for the film. Following the screening, students had the opportunity to chat via Skype with Aneta Brodski, teenage poet and the main subject of the film.
Donice Kaufman and Meena Man at our Downtown Public Library Screening of Deaf Jam. The film will be broadcast nationally on NPT and PBS Stations nationwide on Wed. 11/9 at 9:00 p.m. Central.
That weekend, on October 15, Deaf Jam screened for the public at Nashville Public Library’s monthly Community Cinema event. Hearing Bridges provided ASL interpreters for the introduction and post-screening discussion, and the conversation was also translated via CART — Computer Assisted Realtime Translation – from a laptop in the back of the room to the big screen. Hearing Bridge’s Donice Kaufman led the discussion, featuring Hillsboro High School deaf education teacher Meena Mann, who performed poems via ASL. Meena also talked about showing up for her job interview at Hillsboro with an interpreter, surprising the interview staff, who hadn’t realized before that she was deaf. Several deaf audience members shared their job-search experiences and their love of deaf culture. (For those who haven’t attended a public event with deaf panel members, a translator voiced those comments from a microphone in the audience.) It was a fantastic event and our first experience with CART and ASL translation.
All Community Cinema films include closed captioning, made available upon request, so I hope this is something we’ll continue all season. We’re committed to building translation services into our budget so we can make Community Cinema screenings fully accessible. When we screened The Eyes of Me last season, a film about students at the Texas School for the Blind, we realized how few public screenings are accessible. Thanks to ITVS, who produces the Independent Lens documentaries we show at Community Cinema, all films now include captioning, and we’re working to provide audio description for audience members who are blind or visually impaired.
Thank you to Hearing Bridges, Martha O’Bryan Center, and the Belcourt Theatre for making the build-up to the Deaf Jam broadcast so great – and for bringing a fantastic film/discussion opportunity to Nashville. We’re also thrilled this season to bring Community Cinema films to students at Oasis Center. Details coming soon.
This month, we’re screening We Still Live Here: As Nutayunean for the public on Saturday, November 26, 2:30-5 p.m. at Nashville Public Library’s downtown branch. We’ll also be screening it at Martha O’Bryan. It’s a beautiful film about the Wampanoag people in Massachusetts – the Native people who first greeted the pilgrims – so it’s an ideal learning opportunity as we observe the Thanksgiving holiday.
Hope to see you there!
Allison Inman is National Engagement Coordinator for ITVS and Education and Engagement Coordinator for the Belcourt Theatre.
Photos courtesy of Frank Keesee.
