‘Deaf President Now!’ Review: Davis Guggenheim and Nyle DiMarco’s Doc Gives the Deaf Rights Movement a Compelling Spotlight

A couple of weeks back, apropos of nothing, a small cadre in the cesspool formerly known as Twitter decided that the most important cultural irritant of the moment was the rise of visible ASL interpreters at press conferences and public events.

It was a brief moment of directionless outrage that offered a reminder of how eager some people are to marginalize even small traces of accommodation and to erase even incremental traces of progress.

Look no further than Nyle DiMarco and Davis Guggenheim‘s new Apple documentary Deaf President Now! for an efficient and inspiring primer on how hard-won and important that progress truly was and still is.

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A fine entry in the generally prolific “Birth of a Movement” documentary genre, Deaf President Now! illustrates what is and was distinctive about the Deaf rights movement, but also the elements that connect it to many recent campaigns for visibility and recognition. Although I think there are gaps that DiMarco and Guggenheim could have filled in, the documentary is elevated by its exceptional quartet of central heroes and by its effort to tailor the storytelling and aesthetic approach to the unique aspects of this movement.

The movie focuses on eight days in 1988 after Gallaudet, the world’s first Deaf university, selected a new president. The university’s board of trustees, composed mostly of hearing individuals, chose Elisabeth Zinser, an educator with a nursing background. Zinser had no connection to Gallaudet or the deaf community. She couldn’t even sign. She was chosen over two Deaf candidates, including I. Jordan King, the school’s dean.

In its 124-year history to that point, Gallaudet had never had a Deaf president, and Zinser’s appointment sparked eight days of protests, burgeoning around a quartet of students: Greg Hlibok, Jerry Covell, Bridgetta Bourne-Firl and Tim Rarus.

The documentary smartly and carefully restricts its interview subjects to the group that came to be known as the DPN 4, plus King.

This limits the documentary’s scope slightly. It might have been interesting to have had a little outside insight into the political climate at Gallaudet before the DPN protests, as well as the state of the Deaf rights movement at large. I can also see where some insight from a member of the Gallaudet board prior to this upheaval could have had value.

But focus is important, and the directors are able to use the four activists and their backstories to trace many aspects of Deaf culture and Deaf disenfranchisement through American history — going back to the tarnished legacy of Alexander Graham Bell and the American education system’s attempts to “mainstream” Deaf students in the interest of erasing Deaf culture. I came away suspecting that the opening up of the story wouldn’t have been harmful, but nor was it necessary, finally, because Deaf President Now! works just fine as is.

The presence of Greg, Jerry, Bridgetta and Tim lets Deaf President Now! do one of my favorite things that a good Birth of a Movement documentary can achieve — namely, breaking down the perception of any underrepresented group as monolithic. These four come from four very different upbringings, with four very different journeys to Gallaudet, four very different approaches to the Deaf community and four different ways of speaking. It’s particularly informative to watch the gregarious Jerry, who unapologetically and evocatively signs using the entire cinematic frame, complain that part of why Greg became a spokesman for their group was that he was presentable and contained, that he signed small — and then to watch Greg’s evolution as a speaker over those eight days.

These four people were bonded in the most heightened and public way possible. Nearing 40 years later, their disagreements still seem fresh and relevant. “People working toward common goals don’t always need to agree about everything” is always a good lesson, as is “Not every path toward advocacy is a straight line,” which is well-captured here through King’s journey from uncertain company man to leader.

The primary interviews are conducted in ASL and accompanied by actors’ voices, a choice that doesn’t necessarily add anything to the proceedings. But between ASL, the voiceovers and subtitles, Deaf President Now! has a commitment to capturing language of different sorts and a commitment to accessibility that can only be admirable.

DiMarco and Guggenheim are working with a wealth of archival footage from the protests themselves and from the media coverage that accompanied them, including an ABC News interview in which Ted Koppel has to explain the decision to use close-captioning to the audience.

Along with the interviews and archival footage are POV-driven reenactments that let the filmmakers attempt to simulate a Deaf perspective on the action. The latter approach makes use of shifting sound design in which some scenes play with full audio, others capture the augmented experience of using a hearing aid, and others rely on a percussive soundtrack to convey the extra-sensory “feeling” of sound described by the heroes in key moments. Sometimes it adds to a universal quality of the documentary, while other elements seem tailored exclusively to the experience of Deaf audiences. But the impression given throughout is one of deep consideration for every filmmaking decision made here.

Deaf President Now! builds to a climax that is emotionally rousing on its own terms and would educate the “Why do we still need ASL interpreters at events?” hecklers (as if they’d ever watch a documentary like this). And if you finish Deaf President Now! and you wish the filmmakers could have added a little bit more follow-up content into the present day, check out DiMarco’s Netflix reality series Deaf U, which should have gotten more than a single season.