Aneta Brodski is a whirlwind of motion. To, from and at her New York high school for the deaf, the boisterous Israeli-born teen communicates nonstop with friends and teachers in American Sign Language.
Aneta’s buoyant personality, and her nonstop urge to compose and perform poetry, galvanizes Judy Lieff’s kinetic, inspiring documentary, “Deaf Jam.” It premieres Thursday, Nov. 3 on PBS’ “Independent Lens.”
An accomplished dancer, teacher and filmmaker, Lieff was ready for a new direction when a friend introduced her to signing.
“I was getting bored with the whole dance scene,” she confided during a visit to the Bay Area this month for the Mill Valley Film Festival. “I was making experimental dance films and I wanted to do something else that resonated with me. Wow! Finally, here’s something really concrete. It’s movement, but it’s saying something. It’s not esoteric.”
“Deaf Jam” is instantly and compulsively watchable for anyone who hasn’t been exposed to deaf kids talking in ASL.
“They’re speaking with their bodies,” explains Lieff, who grew up in a woodsy town in Connecticut and migrated to New York to dance and attend college. “For dancers, your first language is physical expression. So to have a language that is based in physical expression, I automatically had a connection to it.”
Lieff began making video poems with deaf students, and got wind of a high school poetry class at the Lexington School for the Deaf in Queens, N.Y. She raised the funds to expand it into a yearlong after-school program, and the next step was taping prospective students, one of whom was Aneta.
“The audition tapes went out to the teachers, and Aneta just jumped out at everyone right away,” Lieff relates.
Aneta was 7 when she moved to the U.S. with her family. She’d learned Israeli Sign Language, and to this day it’s the language she and her best friend use to talk with each other. However, Aneta, hasn’t been back to Israel since she left. Her parents (who are also deaf) didn’t obtain their green cards until this past summer, so the family risked not being readmitted to the U.S. if they traveled abroad.
Some viewers will see Aneta — incorrectly — as a stand-in for Israel. Others will conclude that, like many young immigrants, America is now her country.
“You could say that,” Lieff says thoughtfully, noting that at the time of the filming, Aneta was not legal. “So can this be your country if you’re not legal, and you’ve been living here since you were 7? She doesn’t have any of the benefits that any of her peers have by being a citizen. It’s a ridiculous injustice.”
This off-camera context adds another layer of complexity to Aneta’s on-camera collaboration with a hearing Palestinian-American slam poet. Tahani Salah and Aneta rehearse and rewrite their poem, present a version at Gallaudet University for the Deaf in Washington, D.C., and perform the finished piece to a rapt crowd at a New York spoken word show.
“Tahani is a really special person,” Lieff says. “She’s a youth mentor for Urban Word NYC, and she’s immersed in that world. If you look at her Facebook page, she’s got over a thousand friends. She’s someone who I feel is the epitome of tolerance, but she comes from a very strict Muslim family. When the girls were performing at Gallaudet, she was not allowed to spend the night there. Her father came down and picked her up.
“I think the collaboration affected Tahani,” Lieff continues. “She has kind of a sheltered existence. Her parents grew up in Palestine, but she did not. Her father has created a prosperous life here. The dichotomy between the two families, and what is open to Tahani, I think that really hit her.”
“Deaf Jam” backgrounds its social-issue concerns, but Lieff realizes that won’t stop some viewers from embracing Aneta and Tahani’s collaboration as a metaphor for Israeli-Palestinian cooperation.
“I just think, in general, the film is about tolerance,” she declares. “So many times prejudice isn’t based on personal experience. Sometimes it’s just what’s learned. Whether it’s the Israeli-Palestinian [issue], or other factions, [the film] can be representative of many constituencies where there’s built-in prejudice.”
“Deaf Jam” airs at 11 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 3 on KQED Plus and 11 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 9 on KQED. In ASL and English with English subtitles. (Unrated, 60 minutes)