"The Silent Child" Brings LIGHT To Deaf Advocacy

If someone would have told me that 20 minutes, 7 characters, and one relevent plot could create tears on my cheeks I would have scoffed and perhaps told them off.  However, "The Silent Child", a short film directed by Chris Overton,  not only produced powerful emotions but conveyed a powerful message regarding children in the deaf community. In the film, Joanne, a young expert in deaf studies, is hired to help Libby. Libby has grown up in a home of hearing family members including her mother (Sue), Father (Paul), and two high-school aged older siblings. Libby has low communication skills and struggles in the silent world in which she is trapped. Joanne is able to teach Libby sign language, giving Libby a door to communication. However, Sue (Libby's mother) eventually decides that sign language is not the best option for her daughter and integrates her into a mainstream public school where Libby falls very behind. The film directors end with a plug for accommodating and providing opportunities to deaf children. The film was affective because of the use of cinematography and lighting appealed to the advocacy of deaf children.

The directors affectively used cinematography to express feeling, the passing of time, and express ideas. Often the camera focused on Libby and then on Joanne to show the communication, or lack thereof, between the two. It showed the separation between them at the beginning of their relationship until they could finally communicate. Slow motion was also used to express the passing of time as we see the progression in Libby. Both of these film rhetorical tools allowed understanding to the difficulty that Libby experiences as a deaf child and the joy that can come from gaining communication. Finally, in the finally scene the camera angle shows the playground of Libby's school from above with the array of playing children and Libby staying still. This helped depict the loneliness that Libby must feel in a silent world.

Additionally throughout the film, lighting was used to show juxtaposition between Libby's world and the communicating world.  However, lighting was also used to express feeling. The lighting for the overall film is foggy and dreary until Libby begins to learn and then there is a lot of light and more outside scenes. At one point Joanne is communicating with Libby outside and smiling; there is a lot of light. The mother (Sue) is inside the house and the lighting falls to shadow her face, showing the contrast between the two worlds. The lightning allows viewers, in a symbolic way, to see that communication brought hope and joy to Libby's life when she lived in a silent, dark world. 

Overall, the piece was very well done. It not only inspires and is visually beautiful, but allows the viewer to see into a contemporary issue at hand: advocacy for deaf children.