Plot
The filmmaker's parents were both born deaf; and the couple raised children who were not deaf. Paul Taylor and his wife Sally Taylor were in their 60s when they both decided to have cochlear implant surgery, which could permit them to hear for the first time. [3] The documentary follows what turns out to be a complicated journey from the comfortable world of silence to a profoundly challenging world of sounds and language. [4]
The documentary introduces the couple's personal histories – childhood years learning to communicate in a special school, experiencing the stigma surrounding deafness in mainstream high schools, and having meaningful careers in the Deaf community at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf. Paul was a pioneer in development of TDD (telecommunications device for the deaf) which is also known as TTY.
The couple's filmmaker daughter chronicled these surgeries and the aftermath. The film shows some of the short-term consequences, including both expected and unexpected adjustments each would need to make. These two deaf people investigate the sounds and meaning of sounds; but learning what not to hear becomes an equally significant challenge. The camera records quite different reactions as the couple struggles to adjust after living deaf for a lifetime. [3] The effects of the surgeries are not entirely positive. [5]
The film establishes cochlear implant surgery in an intimate family setting rather than the larger context of the Deaf community. [6]
A cochlear implant (CI) is a surgically implanted neuroprosthesis that provides a person who has moderate-to-profound sensorineural hearing loss with sound perception. With the help of therapy, cochlear implants may allow for improved speech understanding in both quiet and noisy environments. A CI bypasses acoustic hearing by direct electrical stimulation of the auditory nerve. Through everyday listening and auditory training, cochlear implants allow both children and adults to learn to interpret those signals as speech and sound.
Mark Achbar is a Canadian filmmaker, best known for The Corporation (2003), Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media (1994), and as an Executive Producer on over a dozen feature documentaries.
Sound and Fury is a documentary film released in 2000 about two American families with young deaf children and their conflict over whether or not to give their children cochlear implants, surgically implanted devices that may improve their ability to hear but may threaten their Deaf identity.
Thomas Furneaux Lennon is a documentary filmmaker. He was born in Washington, D.C., graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1968 and Yale University in 1973.
The 2007 Sundance Film Festival ran from January 18 until January 28, 2007, in Park City, Utah with screenings in Salt Lake City, Utah and Ogden, Utah. It was the 23-rd iteration of the Sundance Film Festival. The opening night film was Chicago 10; the closing night film was Life Support.
Jon Alpert is an American journalist and documentary filmmaker, known for his use of a cinéma vérité approach in his films.
Irene Taylor is a film director and producer.
Elizabeth Freya Garbus is an American documentary film director and producer. Notable documentaries Garbus has made are The Farm: Angola, USA,Ghosts of Abu Ghraib,Bobby Fischer Against the World,Love, Marilyn,What Happened, Miss Simone?, and Becoming Cousteau. She is co-founder and co-director of the New York City-based documentary film production company Story Syndicate.
Jeffrey Friedman is an American filmmaker. In 2021, he and Rob Epstein won a Grammy Award for their work on the documentary film Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice
Paul Taylor was an American engineer, a pioneer in development of telecommunications devices for the deaf. He also enjoyed a kind of celebrity status because of his central role in the award-winning documentary Hear and Now. The film by daughter Irene Taylor Brodsky chronicles the before and after experiences of her parents, Paul and Sally Taylor, both of whom underwent cochlear implant surgeries in their mid-60s after a lifetime of deafness.
Jennifer Fox is an American film producer, director, cinematographer, and writer as well as president of A Luminous Mind Film Productions. She won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance for her first feature documentary, Beirut: The Last Home Movie. Her 2010 documentary My Reincarnation had its premiere at the International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam (IDFA) in 2010, where it won a Top 20 Audience Award.
The 27th annual Sundance Film Festival took place from January 20, 2011 until January 30, 2011 in Park City, Utah, with screenings in Salt Lake City, Utah, Ogden, Utah, and Sundance, Utah.
Steven Ascher is an American independent director, producer and writer. He was nominated for an Academy Award and has received the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival among many other awards. His book The Filmmaker’s Handbook is a bestselling text.
Lindsey Dryden is a British film director, producer and writer.
Deafness has varying definitions in cultural and medical contexts. In medical contexts, the meaning of deafness is hearing loss that precludes a person from understanding spoken language, an audiological condition. In this context it is written with a lower case d. It later came to be used in a cultural context to refer to those who primarily communicate through sign language regardless of hearing ability, often capitalized as Deaf and referred to as "big D Deaf" in speech and sign. The two definitions overlap but are not identical, as hearing loss includes cases that are not severe enough to impact spoken language comprehension, while cultural Deafness includes hearing people who use sign language, such as children of deaf adults.
Motto Pictures is a documentary production company based in Brooklyn, New York specializing in producing and executive producing documentary features. Motto secures financing, builds distribution strategies, and creatively develops films, and has produced over 25 feature documentaries and won numerous awards.
Dr. Charles Limb is a surgeon, neuroscientist, and musician at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) who has carried out research on the neural basis of musical creativity and the impact of cochlear implants on music perception in hearing impaired individuals. As an otologic surgeon and otolaryngologist, he specializes in treatment of ear disorders.
Kim A. Snyder is an American filmmaker and producer. Previously, she spent some time contributing to Variety.
Sushmit Ghosh is an Academy award nominated filmmaker based in India. His Peabody-award winning documentary film, Writing With Fire, became the first Indian feature documentary to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. It premiered at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, winning the Audience Award as well as the Special Jury Award in the World Cinema Documentary Competition. Ghosh’s work has also been nominated for the Grierson, IDA and PGA awards. He is a co-founder of the award-winning production company, Black Ticket Films and a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
