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‘Deaf President Now!’ Review: Spirited Doc Communicates Why a Turning Point for Deaf Rights Still Matters
The passionate film depicts game-changing demonstrations at Gallaudet U. that argued the school had gone long enough without a Deaf person in charge.
Instead, the focus is on the four students — Hlibok, Jerry Covell, Bridgetta Bourne-Firl and Tim Rarus — who led the movement, after learning late on a Sunday that the board of trustees had selected Elisabeth Zinser from among three candidates (two of them deaf men) to lead the university. The filmmakers embrace the Errol Morris style of re-creation, using high-impact inserts — flashing lights, beating drums, a faceless student tearing open a box of flyers — to evoke the excitement of that night from a deaf POV. A film like this craves a villain, and one emerges that night in the form of board chair Jane Bassett Spilman, a rigid New England aristocrat who was dining at a fancy hotel nearby when the decision dropped.
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