Sign language festival in Brazil (2016)

Five years later …. Rachel Sutton-Spence took her ideas from the first Signing Hands Across the Water festival in the USA first to South Africa (2014) with Michiko Kaneko and then to Brazil for a festival in 2016, with her colleague Fernanda Machado.

The format of this Brazilian festival also concentrated on performance, discussion and practical workshops, using the same format in both earlier events. This time the guest performers were from South Africa, Brazil, the USA, UK and Sweden. The festival sold out all the available workshops and events, nearly all deaf participants.

The 2016 festival website Festival de folclore surdo explains everything in fine detail (in Libras, the sign language of Brazil) but the film is better in conveying the excitement of those four days. There were familiar faces there from the 2012 festival – Peter Cook (USA), Richard Carter and Donna Williams (UK)

Guest performers (Brazil): Rosana Grasse, Renata Heinzelmann, Carolina Hessel, Rosani Suzin, Carlos Alberto Goes, Marlene Prado, Silas Queiroz

Guest performers (International) John Maucere, Giuseppe Giuranna, Atiyah Asmal, Susan Njeyiyana, Donna Williams, Richard Carter, Peter Cook, Ella Mae Lentz, Johanna Mesch

Martin Haswell’s film, Festival de Folklore Surdo: O filme condenses those four days right down into a few minutes. There is audio in Brazilian Portuguese and subtitles in English and French, so click the CC button and choose the language if you want to watch with subtitles.