SASL Newsletter - Spring 2020 Issue Issue 17 - Spring 2020 | Seite 7

Continued from page 1: American Sign Language and Deaf Folklife in Home Movies
direct or indirect experiences with home movies, we reconstructed a nice picture of the robustness
of home moviemaking among Deaf people during the middle of the 20 th century. Some survey
participants recalled their own filmmaking experiences while the others mentioned viewing home
movies through acquaintances who were the filmmakers in their communities. This allowed us to
appreciate and understand the scope of our project, as we realized there are many more “artifacts”
out there. Shown below is the U.S. map scattered with stars reflecting the scope of geography for
the experience of seeing Deaf folklife and sign language in-home movies.
Another important outcome from this survey is the new relationships we cultivated, starting
with the pool of survey respondents and then the nationwide advocacy movement devoted to
preserving endangered home movies. The Deaf seniors shared a common concern about the trend
of neglecting these home movies, and they expressed the desire for some assistance in preserving
and converting them, especially when they are not familiar with new technology for digitization. This
gave us some ideas for building a prototype for planning a home movie database.
However, we wonder if other minority groups share similar experiences with home movies
and concerns about the endangerment of these treasures. This led us to search online, and this
was how we found a worldwide movement of people devoted to preserving old home movies, which
they consider as orphan films since many were often found at flea markets or estate sales. This
national network has its own Center for Home Movies, as described on this website
(http://www.centerforhomemovies.org/). The organization invited us to co-present a symposium
covering the diversity of community involvement in making home movies at New York University’s
Orphan Films Festival in 2018. This allowed us to provide to the broad audience a direct look into
the way of life with sign language among Deaf people in the 20 th century. The popularity of this topic
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The Power of ASL
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Spring 2020 – Issue 17