Deaf President Now! (dir. Nyle DiMarco and Davis Guggenheim)
The request at the centre of Deaf President Now! is hardly a radical one. Even for 1988, long before “DEI” and “woke” were corporate bugaboos. That a school, Gallaudet University in Washington DC, for the deaf and hard-of-hearing should have a president who is deaf or hard-of-hearing and that at least some of its board members should be, too, just makes sense. The subjects of Deaf President Now! knew it and, eventually, so did everybody else—that the people tasked with running and operating a university should have at least some of the life experience of the people who go there. That those in charge of a federally funded institution for such people shouldn’t, at the very least, appear burdened by the responsibility of a job they accepted. It’s not like Gallaudet was hiding the makeup of its student body.
I wasn’t aware of the “Deaf President Now” movement of Gallaudet until watching Deaf President Now! The events depicted here occurred in 1988, but it does feel appropriate that this film comes out now. We are now in 2025 and nothing has really changed. Places of education are more concerned with appeasing rich donors and board members who haven’t been to school since Jane Fonda was on television in legwarmers. Jane Bassett Spilman (“the epitome of snobbery and wealth”), the key antagonist of this well-made documentary, is a villain to boil your blood whose smug face and unmoveable hair is emblematic of so much that is wrong with higher education that’s all about appearances and not about the very things they claim to stand for. If a qualified deaf or hard-of-hearing person can’t run a school for the deaf or hard-of-hearing, then what did they ever hope to inspire in their students?
These issues are energetically interrogated (although not too academically) in the first feature by deaf activist, model and actor Nyle DiMarco. He has joined forces with Davis Guggenheim to tell the story of one of the key moments of his community’s history. Guggenheim, an Oscar-winner for An Inconvenient Truth, is not my favourite filmmaker, but in this instance, his own directorial tendencies fit suitably and the film thankfully doesn’t fall into the same traps as He Named Me Malala or Waiting for Superman. Like Crip Camp a few years back, Deaf President Now! is a rousing effort about a disability rights moment that shouldn’t be as little-known as it is. In fact, the Americans With Disabilities Act was passed not too long after the events of this film.
I enjoyed this film greatly, and a lot of that has to do with its central talking heads. Jerry Covell, Bridgetta Bourne-Firl, Tim Rarus, Greg Hlibok and I King Jordan, who did eventually win the position of Gallaudet president. Several decades later and the first four in particular remain as strong-willed as they were, seen in great archival footage fronting protests and television interviews. It proves a smartly assembled technical piece, too. Michael Harte’s editing, switching between archival footage and cleanly shot talking heads is efficient and tight. The sound design of Samir Foco is a surprising, nonsensical snub by the Emmy voters.
I was curious, however, about how it consistently cuts away from the talking heads mid-stream. I know there are closed captions, but I wondered if relying more heavily on audio translation with this sort of staccato on-screen signing was more for the benefit of us hearing abled viewers than those who are not. For a film that was otherwise very adept at bolstering empathy in its viewers while not apologising for its subjects' at times prickly nature, this was one area that left me questioning.
