George William Veditz gives an eleven-minute speech in this silent movie. It's entirely in Sign Language.
Veditz was born to German emigrant parents in 1861. He lost his hearing at the age of eight and was enrolled in a school for the deaf. Over the course of his life (he died in 1937), he became an instructor in Sign Language at the Colorado School for the Deaf and President of the National Association of the Deaf. With the rise of motion pictures, silent until the middle of the 1920s, he pushed forward a proposal to make this film in support of Sign Language, which he felt was threatened by the oralist movement in education.
This movie was added to the National Film registry in 2010, While it, like many of the films on the Registry, have been added more for their political value than artstic merit as cinema, this is a worthy addition.
Veditz was born to German emigrant parents in 1861. He lost his hearing at the age of eight and was enrolled in a school for the deaf. Over the course of his life (he died in 1937), he became an instructor in Sign Language at the Colorado School for the Deaf and President of the National Association of the Deaf. With the rise of motion pictures, silent until the middle of the 1920s, he pushed forward a proposal to make this film in support of Sign Language, which he felt was threatened by the oralist movement in education.
This movie was added to the National Film registry in 2010, While it, like many of the films on the Registry, have been added more for their political value than artstic merit as cinema, this is a worthy addition.