Compensation by Zeinabu irene Davis

https://walkerart.org/calendar/2024/compensation-by-zeinabu-irene-davis

April 19, 2024 7 pm 

Walker Art Center 

Zeinabu irene Davis’s debut feature film takes place across two parallel narratives set in Chicago at the beginning and end of the 20th century. Each tale is a love story between a Deaf woman and a hearing man and their navigations of not only the language barrier between American Sign Language (ASL) and spoken English but the racism, audism, and other obstacles in their lives. Using ASL as well as filmmaking devices from the silent film era, Compensation imagines an inventive approach to a bilingual film that makes visible the creative efforts and necessary work of accessibility, essential to meaningful communication. 1999, 16mm, b/w, US, in English with subtitles and American Sign Language, 95 min.

16mm collection print courtesy the UCLA Film & Television Archive.

A conversation with Alison O’Daniel and Zeinabu irene Davis follows the screening.

Alison O’Daniel: Are You Listening Series

Filmmaker and artist Alison O’Daniel’s debut feature film The Tuba Thieves stems from a radical inquiry into what it means to listen. As a d/Deaf/hard of hearing artist, O’Daniel’s practice moves across film, sculpture, and performance to investigate how we hear, experience, and understand sound.

In conjunction with the release of her film, the Walker invited O’Daniel to embark on a long-form cinema residency. Marking its first stage, the cinema series Alison O’Daniel: Are You Listening? O’Daniel utilizes the Walker Cinema as a space to further the inquiries she began with The Tuba Thieves. Her feature was made within and collaborating with a d/Deaf community; this series, however, examines films made by hearing filmmakers that prominently feature d/Deaf actors and characters in their story lines. Together, these engagements ask the question: “What does a d/Deaf Cinema sound like?”