Sign the Show: Deaf Culture, Access & Entertainment brings together entertainers, the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (HOH) community, and American Sign Language (ASL) interpreters to discuss accessibility at live performances in a humorous, heartfelt, and insightful way.
Filmmaker Cat Brewer’s passion for communicating, educating, and advocating shines through in her film Sign the Show, which enlightens audiences about the challenges faced by the Deaf & HOH community as they fight for access to things most hearing people take for granted. Brewer hopes her film will create a cultural shift in the entertainment industry by making open access the norm for a more inclusive world.
Adrian L. Burrell (Oakland, California) is a storyteller who uses photography, film, and site-specific installation to examine issues of race, class, gender, and intergenerational dynamics. His work focuses on notions of kinship, diasporic narratives, and the gaps between place and belonging. His series “Mama’s Babies” traces his family’s history through slavery, the Great Migration, the crack era, and the current displacement of Black people in Oakland through gentrification.
Adrian won the 2019 SF Camerawork Juror’s Choice Award and the John Collier Award from SFAI. He has lived and worked on four continents and has exhibited work in spaces as varied as the Pingyao International Photography Festival in China, Photoville in New York City, Pop-Up Magazine, and most recently, SFMOMA. A United States Marine Corps veteran, Adrian earned a BFA in film from the San Francisco Art Institute and an MFA from Stanford’s Department of Art & Art History, where he served as the Black Graduate Student Community Outreach Chair.
The Game God(S) shows 4 characters: Martina, Frank, Brianna and Craig. They share their experiences as the Goddess of the Crossroads pushes us between the then and the now, connecting The Game God, The Game and Capitalism to the Blackness.
Butterfly Boxing is a sweeping fable, employing magical realism to chronicle a city threatened by gentrification and at risk of losing its dreams. Rose, a talented photographer, is visited by Ant in her dreams, as he urges her to follow her path. Instead, she denies this vision, choosing to run her family’s Timeless business. When her home and business are put in jeopardy by rising rent and greedy developers, her landlord, Amari, forces his brother, Cassius (aka Cash), to fight in a boxing match in hopes of winning the prize money to pay off their loans. Amari must decide if his dusty dream is worth pushing Cash beyond the brink. Rose and Cash, however, must decide if they really want the status quo, or if they should leave it all behind and embark on a greater journey.
Joslyn Rose Lyons has directed and produced a diverse range of Award-Winning content in film and television for more than a decade, including work with STARZ, Lionsgate, UNINTERRUPTED, Warner Bros Pics., BET, MTV, and OWN.
Joslyn’s work with BET began at Rap City and extends to directing and producing the first Music Matters Grammy Showcase at Creative Artists Agency (CAA) with Mack Wilds, PJ Morton and Mali Music, to producing BET Celebrity Basketball with Nick Cannon, Chris Brown, Trevor Jackson, Jemelle Hill, Angela Yee, Irv Gotti, Fat Joe, and Lil Rel Howery for the BET Awards.
Joslyn is a Producer on Speaking Truth to Power, (Lionsgate/STARZ), which won Outstanding Documentary at the 2022 NAACP Image Awards. The film features powerful interviews with Rep. Barbara Lee, Alice Walker, Cory Booker, Rep. Ayanna Presley, Danny Glover, Van Jones, and Rep., and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Joslyn has teamed with STARZ and their #TaketheLead initiative on the outreach. The #TakeTheLead initiative is “STARZ’s commitment to amplifying narratives by, about and for women and underrepresented audiences”.
For LeBron James’ digital platform UNINTERRUPTED, Joslyn created and executive produced Same Energy. The series featured in-depth interviews with NFL Champion Marshawn Lynch and Grammy Award winning 2 Chainz.
The Ossie Award The Ossie Award is a feature film that exemplifies a “film with the single purpose of improving the human conditions of our
6:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. Join us closing day of The 22nd Oakland International Film Festival on September 21st at one of Oakland’s premiere night
Cinema and reality blur with comic deconstruction when Lana’s movie falls through the ceiling into her life. Directed by Alex Zajicek BUY TICKETS Director –
Charles Curtis Blackwell: the Oakland poet, painter, playwright and teacher — takes us on an intimate journey into his past and present. From his challenging
Part narrative performance film, part documentary, A LITTLE HOPE FOR CHICAGO is a walk through the life of a Chicago hustler, narrowly avoiding the devastating
