Written by Cori Dioquino
Conversations with Charlie Ainsworth interpreted by Megan Moore.
Conversations with Film Festival Alliance interpreted by Tricia Kanke of Hands Up Communications.
If you’ve been paying attention to Hollywood this past year, you might have noticed a surge of deaf representation in film and TV. New Amsterdam cast deaf actress Sandra Mae Frank as a series regular, the movie CODA made headlines when Apple acquired the film rights for a festival record of $25 million. And Marvel in its newfound quest to be more inclusive in its representation of superheroes has added to its cinematic canon, not just one, but two deaf superheroes. The Eternals featured award-winning actress Lauren Ridloff as its first ever deaf superhero Makkari; and the Disney Plus series Hawkeye recently introduced audiences to a new vigilante to rival the blind Daredevil: Echo, played by deaf Native American actress Alaqua Cox. Even Tik Tok has encouraged its users to learn sign language with its most recent “Two Birds On a Wire” Challenge. The hashtag, which amassed over 126 million views and participants, challenged Tik Tokers to perform the popular Regina Spektor song “Two Birds” in American Sign Language.
Though it’s been exciting to watch, I can’t help but speculate if the spike in popular culture’s deaf representation is sincere. To ask bluntly – is this just a fad? Or is the attention actually giving deaf creators the opportunities they truly deserve?
These were the questions I sought to ask when I sat down with my old friend, filmmaker Charlie Ainsworth.
After years of following each other on social media, we first reconnected via Zoom in April of last year. Charlie is a talented deaf actor and filmmaker whom I met back in 2014 when we were both cast in a Commedia dell’Arte production of Titus Andronicus at Gallaudet University. (Yes, you read that right – we performed in a comedic interpretation of Shakespeare’s bloodiest and most violent show. It was damn good, too, by the way. But I digress.)
“I’ve always loved film,” Charlie tells me after a few minutes of small talk. “Growing up in the ‘90s, there were no captions. Well, there were captions, but it’s not as prevalent as it is today. My brother and I would watch movies with no captions and then we would kind of make up what was actually happening. We would put on shows in the basement. We would say, ‘This is what happened in the film!’ I’m sure my parents were like, ‘That’s not what happened in the film, but okay…’”
So how does a deaf kid from the Midwest shift from a young movie lover to a filmmaker? “Not enough deaf people in film,” he says frankly. “Theatre [too], but film is more attractive to me. Film is more permanent. There’s more freedom as well.” He paused to think. “I just want to be a filmmaker.”
To say that Charlie Ainsworth is a film buff would be an understatement. He’s probably one of the most well-rounded, self-educated filmmakers I’ve met. His mental library of films is extensive. If he wanted to, he could easily come across as one of those pretentious movie connoisseurs with a condescending attitude, but Charlie is so passionate, forthcoming and direct there’s no room in his personality for pretense or condescension. If anything, the more we chat, the more I get the impression that he wants me to love films as much as he does.
His honesty when talking about filmmaking as a deaf filmmaker is brutal and refreshing. Dare to ask him about the challenges that he faces on a daily basis and he will waste no time telling you about the many constant infractions he and his deaf community members have experienced at film festivals, schools and professional interviews.
“There’s very few deaf people behind the camera. There’s no editors or videographers, anything like that. They’re all hearing.”
He mentions the film CODA, which is about a child of deaf adults with dreams of becoming a musician.
“It’s from a hearing perspective. [It has] a hearing director, producer – there’s no deaf people behind the camera. Sound of Metal had hearing producers,” he explains, referring to the award-winning and historic film which earned Riz Ahmed an Oscar nomination in 2021 for his leading performance, making him the first Muslim actor to do so.
“Sound of Metal is a wonderful film in its own right. It is the best representation of the deaf community that I’ve seen thus far. It doesn’t have that negative perception of the deaf community or losing your hearing [that you often see in films]. It’s very positive. I didn’t have any [issues] with Riz Ahmed and the deaf community seemed to be okay with [him in the role] because he’s a hearing actor whose character in the movie starts out hearing and then loses his [ability to hear].”
Still, the problem remains that it is yet another film centered on the deaf community from the perspective of hearing people. Until I met Charlie and the cast and crew of Titus at Gallaudet, it never occurred to me that the lack of deaf representation and accessibility as a whole was a problem that needed to be addressed.
“I think in general [producers] are very afraid to hire us because we have very minimal experience. [It’s] because they haven’t actually given us any experience. They’ll look at two resumes and say ‘Alright, we have a deaf person who has a little experience in filmmaking. Do we risk the money and invest in this director? Or, we have this hearing person who has loads of experience. That’s a safer bet.’ It’s taking a gamble and a risk, giving us that opportunity to do that. We’re fed up because we’re not getting those opportunities.”
Charlie directing on the set of his film Hamburger Airplane.
When he talks about investing in a deaf person, Charlie isn’t just referring to the lack of credits on resumes or training as professionals. Many producers and film festivals aren’t willing to make room in their budget to bring on deaf crew members or staff due to their need for accessibility, such as interpreters on set or captions in a film.
It’s an important conversation to be had during this time in our history. Since the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and countless other Black men and women, as well as the rise of anti-Asian hate crimes throughout the pandemic, many production companies, organizations and corporations have been visibly scrambling to restructure their programs and re-word vision statements in an effort to prove that their businesses are safe and “woke” spaces for BIPOC. Hashtags calling out the entertainment industry’s insensitivity regarding race and exclusivity continue to go viral on social media – reminder, #RepresentationMatters, #OscarsStillSoWhite.
Yet, the only hashtag to have trended in the last year that involved the deaf community directly was the Tik Tok challenge #TwoBirdsOnAWire, which seems somewhat shallow considering their historic struggles to be seen. Deaf representation and accessibility is still a topic rarely addressed in the rooms that need it the most. When it comes to the deaf community, it turns out the price of inclusivity is too high a cost for most people to even want to consider.
“I feel like a financial burden,” Charlie communicates painfully.
“It’s a problem,” agrees Barbara Twist from the Film Festival Alliance. “Often, [the subject of captioning] gets framed as, ‘Oh, it’s just a small group of people’ or an accommodation that needs to be made. Framing it as an ‘accommodation issue’ doesn’t make it as inclusive or welcoming for deaf filmmakers or film goers. We should be making an effort to welcome people into spaces.”
But it’s not just a “small group of people” or even one group within society who need that access to films. As the pandemic continued and lockdown orders extended, more and more film festivals were forced to face the harsh reality that their lack of accessibility was impeding their ability to connect during a time of great uncertainty, making their brands seem disinterested in progress and incapable of growth or change.
“Film festivals should understand that while access does sometimes have a cost associated with it, you might also gain funds. Not just with a wider audience, but also being able to keep your donors connected to your festival longer as they age and lose eyesight and/or hearing and find themselves benefitting from the accommodations,” explains Emily Smith Beitiks, the Associate Director of the Paul K. Longmore Institute on Disability, which organizes the Superfest Disability Film Festival.
Charlie directing on the set of his film Hamburger Airplane.
It seems like it would be a logical adjustment to make. Wouldn’t filmmakers want more people to see their films? Wouldn’t film festivals want to attract more viewers? Yet many still haven’t reformed, citing costs as the main reason they won’t add captioning as an option for viewers. The second most common reason film festivals and filmmakers won’t add captions? Because it’s an inconvenience for their hearing audience members.
“My first experience with film festivals was with my first film, The Pastman. It was accepted into Other Worlds Austin. We got free badges to go [and] see the movies and we asked ‘Hey, are they captioned?’ They said, ‘oh no there’s only one [other film] that’s captioned.’” The captioned film in question featured Sandra Mae Frank, the prominent deaf actress now starring in New Amsterdam as Dr. Wilde.
“Later, I was invited to the launch party where they would be screening the 1988 film Alien Nation. I knew that there was a captioned option for it. I asked, ‘Do you mind turning the closed captioning on for this film?’ And their response was that the audience didn’t buy the badge to look at captioning; that the captioning would get in the way. ‘The audience wants to see the movie as it was intended to be.’ And that hit me. Our basic right of accessibility was rejected.”
If you think that larger film festivals might be more accommodating given their larger budgets, you’d be sorely mistaken. In 2020, SXSW announced that they would be screening their selected films on Amazon. Only 18 out of 36 movies were captioned. The majority of the captioned movies were foreign films.
Charlie and many other deaf filmmakers attempted to reach out and resolve the issue. After multiple emails and no response, he and several other community members banded together and aired their grievances on social media, demanding that the festival address the issue. Of course, that’s when they replied.
“We met with them, but it was a bad meeting. A lady straight up told me that we should wait for it to be released on the internet. The problem is that the short films are not usually captioned.”
Most independent filmmakers don’t make room in their budgets to offer captions to their films.
“There’s a misconception that it costs thousands of dollars to caption your film, but it doesn’t.”
Via platforms such as Rev.com, captioning any film or video costs as little as $1.25 per minute. I recently did this myself for a 7-minute video and, aside from my own lack of understanding of the options available for captioning videos, the process was simple and quick. And to that point, I realized that if the industry as a whole encouraged and empowered filmmakers to add captions to their films, there might be more resources available and less of a learning curve to all involved.
Still from the short film How To Caption Your Movie.
And if you’re looking for a quick tutorial on how easy it is to add captions to your film, just check out Charlie’s award-winning film How To Caption Your Movie, a hilarious and sardonic instructional that points out how incredibly lazy we in the hearing community can actually be when it comes to inclusivity. The film, which was produced by Charlie’s production company Angry Deaf People was well received in the film festival circuit.
“Speaking of Angry Deaf People,” Charlie adds, “I call it a ‘justifiable anger’. It’s funny with that name – within the deaf community I hear two different reactions. There are people who are like ‘Oh your name’s badass, I like it! Yes, I completely agree!’ And then there’s the other side who say, “Oh . . . I’m going to avoid that. I’m going to stay away from that.” Just recently, for The Stand [a film by Stephen King] there were about thirty deaf artists who got together for a meeting and they asked for volunteers who were willing to become the media point of contact for that film. I said ‘Sure I can do that,’ and the guy who ran that meeting responded back, ‘We prefer not … Angry Deaf People? That’s not the approach that we want’ . . . But happy people don’t cause change. Do you think a happy person starts protests? No!”
Charlie and Angry Deaf People are hell-bent on changing the film world. And he’ll do it every way he knows how. For now, it’s through his work as a storyteller.
His latest film, Hamburger Airplane, is perhaps my favorite film that I’ve seen him produce thus far. In keeping with his style, it’s funny and biting. But it also gives a real and honest portrayal of the childhood trauma many within the deaf community experience as they are forced to assimilate into the hearing world around them. It was for this reason that Beitiks accepted the film into the Superfest Disability Film Festival last year.
“This film was the perfect fit for our audience, as we prioritize reaching people with disabilities over educating nondisabled people about the disability experience. To see the trauma of forced normalcy, through oralism in the case of Hamburger Airplane, tackled with such dark humor was sure to resonate with our audience, where many share similar experiences.”
Beyond the humor, there is a sense of musicality to the movements of the actors in Hamburger Airplane, something that abled audiences might not expect from a story about deaf trauma.
“In films by disabled or deaf filmmakers, we often see a disability aesthetic emerge, which is something we hope to see, and even have an award to recognize. It demonstrates that the perspective of living with a disability enriches cinema. [It is] not a burden to ‘overcome’ but a part of diversity that helps broaden what filmmaking can look like. The rhythm and flow featured in Hamburger Airplane at times almost feels like a song [and] brings the rich heritage of ASL into cinema in ways that demonstrate how disability can serve as a creative and generative force.”
It’s easy to pretend that someone else’s problems don’t have to be your own. There’s actually a word for that: Privilege. And while I sit here counting the number of privileges I don’t have as a brown, Filipino, immigrant woman, I’m grateful to those in my life who remind me that I still have privileges I take for granted.
Promo photo from the Deaf Artist Residency Program courtesy of the Anderson Center.
I asked Charlie last month if he thinks that the landscape is evolving for the better now that companies like Marvel seem to be leading the charge regarding deaf representation.
“Yes, I think there is a tremendous landscape shift happening right now. Marvel is opening that up for us. In fact, just two days before Marvel announced the series Echo, I heard through the grapevine that the executive producers, in general, are warming up to the idea of deaf-led features but a t.v. series is ‘heavier lifting’. Boom! And now we have Nyle DiMarco developing a series called ‘Deaf Punk.’ There’s also a deaf-written and directed feature film being made right now, ‘Flash with a Bang’. So, yes. It’s definitely changing for the better.”
“I am very optimistic right now and have seen a very notable shift,” adds Emily Smith Beitiks. “There’s still a long way to go, especially as film festivals will return to in-person venues that are in historic buildings and can’t be made accessible. I hope that the gains festivals made bringing access to the digital realm will not be forgotten when [meeting] in-person is again possible, and will also translate to more progress for their in-person festivals. And we’re happy to help folks looking to learn!”
Charlie and I continue to keep in contact. We’ll email, I’ll ask him how he’s doing – of course he’s swamped with work for school, filming and teaching gigs at a local deaf school. In June 2021, he was accepted into the Deaf Artists Residency Program at the Anderson Center – one of the only programs of its kind in the world. We even sat in a meeting with the Film Festival Alliance together to talk more about the issues surrounding accessibility. I’m hopeful with caution, as I’m sure Charlie may be as well. We’ve agreed to continue stirring our respective pots.
“I sometimes wonder if people only want to stir the pot. But that doesn’t actually get us anywhere,” I say.
“I think it’s just honestly reminding each other of our privilege and speaking up for each other,” Charlie replies.
When I next look at his Instagram, Charlie’s posted a picture of him conferring with David Lynch for the third time virtually. The caption reads, “Aspiring deaf filmmakers – or deafies who just wanna see alike – hit me up.”
You can follow Charlie Ainsworth on Instagram: @angrydeafpeople
For updates on their films, visit Angry Deaf People Production’s website.