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CUNILLA WACSTROM-LUNDQVIST he quality of life for deaf people around the world differs, depending on their country's attitudes toward deaf people and its level of politicat economic, sociat and cultural development. In the twentieth century, Swedish people are striving for equality and fair participation in the culture of their society. In the spring of 1974, the Swedish Parliament established cultural-political goals that indicate that cultural policy will be shaped with more regard for the experiences of disadvantaged groups, such as handicapped people. At present there are still many barriers to access to the arts. For example, people might think that providing a hearing loop in a theater would allow deaf people to follow the performance, but a loop can help only people who are hard of hearing. In 1976, deaf people and handicapped people (we deaf people do not consider ourselves handicapped, but as an ethnic minority with our own language and culture) made our own cultural proposat "Culture for Everyone/' in which we demanded that everyone have an equal right to access to the arts. As a result, in 1977 the Silent Theater (Tyst Teater), the only theater for the deaf in Sweden, was officially recognized and became affiliated with the National Theater, thus becoming a professional theater group. We also got television programs in sign language for both children and adults. These developments have motivated us to seek our roots and the sources of stories and traditions about deaf people. We discussed among ourselves our own awareness and self-knowledge, our possibilities and rights in society, and our relationships to each other and to hearing people. The Silent Theater and sign language TV programs have helped to make sign language popular and accessible to the general public. The increasing use of sign language in news and educational programs proves the acceptance of sign language as a way of communicating among deaf people. However, we have experienced problems with the efforts of hearing people to make TV programs for deaf people. Hearing people .:. do not understand deaf culture or sign language, with all its possibilities of expression; -:. cannot adjust a production process that was created for hearing people; .:. cannot detach themselves from their associations to pictures as hearing people; .:. cannot translate into spoken language what deaf people communicate visually ; and .:. find it easy to make deaf people communicate on hearing people's terms. The Challenge to Deaf People in the Arts Today We often hear that deaf children enjoy the TV programs made for them by hearing people, but children are not able to evaluate critically what they watch. Moreover, deaf children have no other programs for comparison, and few or no opportunities to process their thoughts and experiences of the programs they have seen. Movies and TV Once, when I was making a program for children, I worked with a photographer who had, up to that time, never met deaf people. I carefully prepared him on how a taping with deaf children would proceed. During the first taping, with some eight-year-old school children, the photographer just stood there and did not understand anything. He could not follow the deaf children taking turns while signing. I had to give him a signal when he should follow with the camera, but that didn't work out either. It took him quite a while to learn that the taping had to be done in the way that one would film a silent movie. The tradition of watching films is different among deaf people than among hearing people. Hearing people live in a world where experiences are attached to sounds. In a movie, speech and sound often give hints on how to interpret what one sees. Deaf people experience movies in a different way: Having no support from sound, we can experience only the pictures. Sign language is built on vision, containing elements that resemble "movie language " with its wide-angle shots, close-ups, panning, and so on. We should be aware of these features of sign language and use them when we make movies. In this way, we can develop a tradition of making movies that fit deaf people and allow deaf people to feel that the programs reflect a part uf themselves. Today, however, there may be more interest in making television programs about deaf people than for deaf people. Consider, for example, sign language programs for hearing people: These might not help deaf people, because they can create strange attitudes about deafness. Deaf people...

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