Home Movies Hardly Silent: Unlocking Our Deaf Folklife Films

This book on Deaf made home movies takes readers on a journey through the first fifty years of filmmaking (from 1925 through the 1970s), highlighting how the American Deaf community utilized silent film technology. Home movies and the visual nature of emerging cinema technology of the time afforded Deaf people the opportunity, one that went largely unrealized by others outside of their community, to capitalize on this novel technology wherein all cultural activities preserved and shared on film were naturally embedded with sign language, therefore debunking the widely held belief that these home movies are silent only because they are without sound. Home Movies Hardly Silent covers the histories, methods and analysis of a significant area of filmmaking that is understudied.

Matt Malzkuhn is an educator and entrepreneur who has developed resources related to Deaf Culture and American Sign Language. A former faculty at Gallaudet University, he is now a research consultant for the Sign Language Research Laboratory at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.

Ted Supalla is Professor of Neurology at Georgetown University. He is the co-author of Sign Language Archaeology: Understanding Historical Roots of AmericanSign Language. He also produced a documentary film on a Deaf filmmaker who recorded Deaf culture from 1925 to the 1940s.