Released in 1994, In the Land of
the Deaf is a documentary by Nicolas Philibert featuring deaf people living
in a French town.  We see school children, young adults, families, older
people, and couples getting married.  Some of the families are mostly deaf,
others are mixed, and some have just one deaf person.  There is no commentary,
and the film has a strong anthropological feel to it, as we simply see people
in their ordinary lives or being interviewed about their lives.  There are
subtitles for the French speakers and the deaf people speaking in French sign
language.

It turns out that French sign
language is different not only from American Sign Language, but also from those
of other European countries.  We see deaf people interacting with hearing
people, and finding ways to communicate.  Some discuss how they were mistreated
as children, and some with partial hearing discuss what it is like being forced
to speak rather than use sign language. 

Viewers get more of a sense from
this documentary of some of the subtle nuances of tensions between deaf and
hearing people, and the camaraderie among the deaf.  Often the film is silent
because the person being interviewed is using sign language, or we see deaf
people signing to each other; this is so unusual for a film that it enhances
the feeling that the day to day experience of deaf people is profoundly
different from the hearing.  One person relates an experience of putting in a
hearing aid for the first time and finding the experience profoundly unpleasant
because the world was so noisy, and he felt relieved when he was able to take
the hearing device out. 

Being over 12 years old, this film
is a little out of date since it says nothing about cochlear implants, but one
can watch Sound and Fury to learn more about that.  While Sound and
Fury is an excellent documentary, it is completely dominated by the
controversy over implants, while In the Land of the Deaf is a gentler
film with a very different pace.  It can be viewed many times, and the viewer
will find different aspects to appreciate each time.  The fact that it is about
French people makes the experience of watching it especially interesting for
non-French hearing people, because we are led to wonder how much the cultural
differences between us and the subjects of the documentary are due to their
being deaf, and how much are due to their being French.  In this very
understated way, then, the film provides an argument for seeing deaf culture as
a culture.

© 2006 Christian
Perring. All rights reserved.

Christian
Perring, Ph.D., is Academic Chair of the Arts & Humanities
Division and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Dowling College, Long Island. He is also editor of Metapsychology Online Reviews.  His main
research is on philosophical issues in medicine, psychiatry and psychology.

Categories: Ethics, Movies