Ethnographic Film as Cosmopolitan Product

While deaf filmmaking as a profession has grown exponentially in the previous two decades, deaf ethnographic filmmaking led by deaf researchers and rooted in anthropological fieldwork is new. Most existing ethnographic films involving deaf people are made by hearing filmmakers (often showing presumptions about deaf people and often relying on, or involving, hearing narrators and interpreters). In this presentation, we reflect on deaf ethnographic filmmaking as an inherently collaborative and polyphonic process. We will discuss two case studies. The first, “Ishaare: Gestures and Signs in Mumbai,” is an ethnographic film about deaf-hearing communication in an urban setting. The second, “#deaftravel: Deaf tourism in Bali,” was created within the MobileDeaf project on international deaf mobilities (https://mobiledeaf.org.uk). The researcher and the camera crew involved in both films are deaf signers from various countries, leading to a unique moment where the precepts of deaf ethnographic filmmaking are emerging in multilingual and transnational contexts. The encounters between deaf protagonists, researchers and filmmakers with diverse privileges and lack thereof resulted in approaches to ethnographic filmmaking that explore but also critically interrogate deaf cosmopolitanism.