The Way We Move
A trailblazing ASL interpreter trains fast-fingered protégés to embody live acoustics in this paean to the Deaf community’s bond with music.
Amber Galloway specialises in live American Sign Language interpretation for music festivals and concerts. You might recognise her hip-hop swagger from viral online videos: she captures complex instrumentation and wordplay with her whole body, using facial expressions to evoke tones and moods. Now, this accessibility trailblazer is training new ASL music interpreters, including striving young Puerto Rican father Julian Ortiz and Angela “AV” Vilavong, a queer Laotian from Oakland. Can they master this complex skill in time to join Galloway onstage at Austin City Limits Music Festival?
As her students wrestle with live interpreting’s complex cognitive demands and poetic creative choices, Galloway’s pedagogical flair is treated with due admiration by French directorial duo Vanessa Joo Dumont and Nicolas Davenel. For their part, Ortiz’s and Vilavong’s gifts are also evident (the former went on to live-interpret Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl half-time show, while the latter has been onstage with Céline Dion and The Chemical Brothers). But this sensitive documentary deals with tough emotions, too: Galloway is grieving her son Elijah, who was himself a promising interpreter, as she tries to pull his surviving twin Joshua from a depressive spiral. Equally, we see how Galloway and her protégés’ proudly queer, ancestral and Deaf identities help them express music’s life-affirming power. Turns out the body doesn’t just keep the score; it keeps the beat.
“People assume music doesn’t belong to the Deaf community. This film doesn’t just challenge that assumption but dismantles it … It’s a demonstration of the power of ASL, its ability to transcend language and reach something deeper than sound.” – Deaf actor/filmmaker Nyle DiMarco
Following the Saturday 15 August screening of this film, MIFF is proud to present a Deaf-led panel and film discussion. Join Luke King and Irene Holub, two film buffs with a deep appreciation for Deaf cinema, for an honest and engaging conversation with Deaf filmmakers Sofya Gollan and Ramas McRae in ACMI Cinema 1. This panel will be conducted in Auslan and interpreted into English alongside live captions. The panel is organised by the Australian National University’s Sign on Screen Research Collective.
Tickets
For information about the accessible services being offered at MIFF, please visit miff.com.au/access. If you require any access service, such as wheelchair/step-free access, for any MIFF session, please call 03 8660 4888 or email boxoffice@miff.com.au to book your ticket.
You might also like ...
Beastie Boys, Sonic Youth, Foo Fighters, Bikini Kill, Pavement and more, all at one fateful Aussie music festival. Get in line – we’re heading to 1995.
Inspiring Apple’s Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, the telephone hacker who was born blind made headlines as both a tech prodigy and a big-hearted iconoclast.
They were ordinary teen girls forced to form a band by their dad – and, thanks to one unlistenable (to some!) album, became icons of outsider art.