Receiver

Continuing Jenny Brady’s practice of visually engaging, affective filmmaking, Receiver confronts the assumptions we have with approaches to sound. The film is a collage of Deaf histories, with its centerpiece the Deaf President Now protest at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C. in 1988. A landmark event of resistance, in which D/deaf students protested with demands including the selection of a deaf president of the university, it catalyzed students’ need for representation and their solidarity through direct action.
If there is a receiver, there is also a sender, and the film investigates how exchange—of words, feelings, sounds or ideas—is mediated, negotiated, represented and understood. Brady’s sensitive filmmaking finds space for even the most seemingly inconsequential of volleys: a close-up shot of a candle’s flame being extinguished, while we later see the person who blew it out, as well as a similar blow of air into her face from a force off-screen. In this way, Receiver‘s short running time belies the fact that the film is brimming with ideas and information that can be unpacked through subsequent viewings. —Herb Shellenberger