Deaffest

We hope you’ve purchased your tickets for the Deaffest Film & TV Gala this weekend and if you haven’t there are still some left- book online now! The red carpet Gala event returns with awards for Best Drama, Best Documentary, Best Experimental and Best TV Programme. Our host for the evening will be Deaf British – Australian filmmaker Nadia Nadarajah who has worked as a presenter for BSLBT programmes ‘Wicked’ and ‘Snapshot’. In 2010, she won the award for Best Young Director at the 5th International Disability Film Festival Awards.

She is currently writing and directing her first short film, All Day in 2010. The romantic comedy depicts the writer’s own experience. In 2010, she won the award for Best Young Director at the 5th International Disability Film Festival Awards, held in Russia. Since July of 2009, Nadia has regularly appeared as a TV presenter for programmes ‘Wicked’ and ‘Snapshot’. The programmes are in collaboration with the British Sign Language Broadcasting Trust (BSLBT), set up in 2008 with the sole aim of producing TV programmes in BSL.

Back in London where she currently resides, Nadia has given regular Art lectures at the Royal Academy of Art, and the Tate Modern. She also teaches BSL at the Deaf-led Company, Remark! in conjunction with the Training Division, and has now been teaching for over 12 years.

There will also be live dance performances alongside entertainment from sign language performer Ace Seyed-Ali Mahbaz, who has been touring Europe and comes to Deaffest for the first time to perform ‘Danke’ [Thank You] and ‘Zeit schnell um’ [Time Fast].

View the programme for the weekend online and download it as a pdf.

Caroline O’Neill, producer for the ever popular series of Wicked hopes to be collecting a well deserved award for Programme 8, Series 3 at this year’s Deaffest Gala Awards.

Back in 2001, fresh out of uni, Caroline accidentally ended up at VEE-TV and hasn’t looked back since.  She has an extremely respectable CV with See Hear, Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares and E4 Music Zone being only a few of the programmes under her belt.

She cites the ‘creative process’ and ‘meeting people’ as her reasons for loving the TV industry. Caroline has an uncanny knack for finding weird and wonderful things to film, namely Christopher Sacre, who features in Programme 8.

Christopher’s art, which features sculptures made out of condoms and plaster of Paris, enticed Caroline,

“Christopher was such a character and his idea was just kooky genius”.

This is the first time Caroline has had a programme submitted at Deaffest and she confesses she’ll be a bag of nerves on the day!

‘Wicked’ – Series 3, Programme 8, has been shortlisted for Best TV Programme at this year’s Deaffest Film & TV Gala Awards. Christopher Sacre is also supporting the festival by designing and producing the awards which will be given out on the night!

Sarah Tavner’s ‘Dicing with Sex’ has been nominated in the Best Documentary category at this years Film & TV Gala Awards. Sarah is a veteran in the Deaf TV world, with over 17 years of experience under her belt.

Sarah tirelessly campaigns for Deaf rights, as evident in her documentary on the lack of access to sex education within the Deaf community. Sarah was filming in Blackpool and was shocked to find how ignorant some Deaf teenagers were.

“it was frightening and spurred me on to make a documentary exploiting this serious issue”

Sarah is no newbie to Deaffest, she won the ‘Best Factual’ award for her documentary, ‘Deaf Brain’, in 2009. She hopes that ‘Dicing with Sex’ stands in good stead at this year’s festival.

“it is extremely important to raise awareness that deaf people need adequate access to sex education.”

‘Dicing with Sex’ has been shortlisted for Best Documentary at this year’s Gala Awards.