Deaf Vision.
Deaf Voice.
Deaf Cinema.
Deaf Voice.
Deaf Cinema.
mission
The Deaf Cinema Institute produces original films that emerge from deaf experience. We pursue narrative plentitude in Deaf Cinema, expand the cinematic canon, and build the enduring institutions to make both possible.
what deaf cinema institute is
The Deaf Cinema Institute is a nonprofit film production organization based in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
The first permanent institutional home for Deaf Cinema.
We pursue narrative plentitude in Deaf Cinema. The concept comes from scholar Viet Thanh Nguyen: the idea that a community's stories are free only when they exist in such volume, variety, and contradiction that no single film can be taken as representative of the whole. Deaf Cinema has never had that freedom. A handful of films, however good, cannot carry the weight of an entire community's experience. DCI exists to build the body of work that lifts that weight.
Deaf Cinema does not simply ask to be included in cinema. It expands cinema itself.
The Why
Deaf Cinema Manifesto
Deaf Cinema is the revelation of the Deaf experience.
Deaf Cinema is made by Deaf people.
The director or writer — including co-directors and co-writers — must be Deaf. Deaf characters must be portrayed by Deaf actors.
Sign language is the leading language of Deaf Cinema
— unless it is the deliberate choice of the Deaf filmmaker to represent it differently.
Deaf Cinema carries a Deaf gaze.
Not only in who made it, but in how it sees — framing, editing, and rhythm shaped by a Deaf way of experiencing the world.
Deaf Cinema embodies Deafhood
— Deaf identity, Deaf culture, Deaf history, and Deaf academic and intellectual tradition.
This is the Deaf Cinema Movement.
Deaf Cinema belongs to every Deaf person in the world. And those of us who make it carry a responsibility to the ones who come after — to mentor, to share, and to pass on what we fought to build.
