Nyle DiMarco and Davis Guggenheim shine a deserved light on a major yet little-known turning point in Civil Rights history
I’ve reviewed hundreds of films for Cinapse, and I’ve been honored to champion and critique films focused on the Deaf experience through my perspective as a CODA (Child of Deaf Adults). However, Deaf President Now! offered me a uniquely surreal experience. It’s not just that this is the first major documentary about a significantly overlooked moment in Civil Rights history, or that Nyle DiMarco and Davis Guggenheim’s film is another dramatic milestone in Deaf cinematic representation.
While the film primarily focuses on the incredible work of the “Gallaudet 4,” Deaf President Now! was the first time I finally saw my parents’ stories come to life.
My parents–at the time, Paul Singleton and Patti Moore–were Graduate and PhD students at Gallaudet University during the landmark Deaf President Now protests in March 1988, alongside present and future friends and family. Like many others on campus, they played a vital and active role in the student demonstrations–Dad as a member of the Gallaudet “Ducks” and drafter of the students’ demands, and Mom as a sorority sister of Phi Kappa Zeta and the coordinator for the College for Adult and Continuing Education in the room during student/admin negotiations. Mere months before they got married, they stood in solidarity with their student body by remaining on campus as organizers barred the public and law enforcement from entering until the University Board of Trustees met their demands: the removal of the hearing, non-ASL-speaking president, Elizabeth Zinser, appointed over two qualified Deaf candidates; the resignation of Gallaudet’s hearing board chair; a 51% Deaf majority on the Board; no reprisals against students for the protests; and, most importantly, the appointment of Gallaudet’s first Deaf president in its 124-year history.
My childhood was filled with stories from family and friends of the DPN protests not just because of their personal significance–the seismic events of that week are venerated for generations of Deaf Americans.
It was a communal strike against centuries of paternal, patronizing “guardianship” by Hearing governments and communities. It was an opening salvo in the turning tide of Disability rights that culminated in the ADA of 1990. Over time, this momentous week has largely gone forgotten in Civil Rights history at large–its own cultural injustice that co-directors Nyle DiMarco and Davis Guggenheim attempt to rectify in this documentary with thrilling immediacy and emotional power. Hot off the heels of multiple Academy Award-winner CODA, Apple returns to Sundance with a film that immerses Deaf and Hearing audiences alike in an exciting and entertaining story that captures the Deaf experience like never before.
Focusing on the “Gallaudet 4”–Jerry Covell, Bridgetta Bourne-Firl, Tim Rarus, and Greg Hlibok—Deaf President Now! combines a wealth of student-captured footage and news media archives to create a tapestry of vibrant student activism and justified anger against institutional injustice from various perspectives. Beginning on the eve of the appointment of yet another Hearing President, the directors immediately drop audiences in protest footage. Even without extensive cultural context, the students’ fury effectively underscores the film’s central dichotomy: a living, independent Deaf community who, centuries after the Lincoln-sanctioned founding of their University and the widespread adoption of once-suppressed Sign Language, are still under the boot of a Hearing community that refuses to acknowledge their abilities outside of a belittling comparison to their own. Even for those unfamiliar with the protests, it’s easy to invest in the students’ collective outrage against a governing body that believes fluency in their language is unnecessary for effective leadership. As the film goes on, this archival doesn’t just capture the immediate experience of the Deaf students, but the Hearing world at large. As the fight for Deaf independence reaches national attention, a pre-captioning Hearing media reckons with exactly how to translate this crucial civil rights fight to hearing audiences, including a climactic CNN debate between Hlibok and Zinser moderated by Ted Koppel, who must explain the implementation of closed-captioning to a live Hearing audience. The historical reach of the doc is also impressive–establishing the circumstances that led to this civil powder keg, reaching as far back as the history of telephone inventor and CODA Alexander Graham Bell and his attempts to “fix” his Deaf family, to participant Bridgetta’s admittedly complicated place as a literal “poster child” for teaching Deaf children speech while suppressing ASL development.
It’s this trove of archival that also made watching Deaf President Now! such a surreal experience. I’ve never watched a film that turned appearances of my own family–Mom, Dad, Step-Parents, Uncles, and more–into Gene Parmesan-esque jump scares. Much like any new audience coming to this doc, I had no idea that this footage, let alone this quality of footage, even existed–as much as I’d grown up listening to these stories relayed first-hand, it’s another matter entirely to see the people you love shape history from such an omniscient, objective viewpoint. Possibly to Deaf President Now!’s detriment, the revelatory amount of available footage reveals the many possible story threads that could’ve resulted in an equally informative and well-paced multi-episode docuseries. However, DiMarco and Guggenheim’s laser focus on the experience of the Gallaudet 4 and editor Michael Harte’s judicious, rapid-fire presentation make the tightly-paced 100-minute feature a relentlessly engaging watch.
As DiMarco and Guggenheim’s documentary unfolds, one of Deaf President Now!’s greatest strengths is its ability to use the extensive archive to challenge the notion of a monolithic Deaf experience. Jerry, Bridgetta, Tim, and Greg’s silent home movies and photographs effectively illustrate their families’ diverse approaches to confronting or adapting to the pervasive nature of audism as Deaf individuals living in a predominantly hearing world. At the same time, this seamless transition between past and present perspectives grounds viewers in the personal evolution of the Gallaudet 4 during a week that subjected each of them to immense societal scrutiny. Under just as much pressure is the film’s fifth participant, I. King Jordan, then-Dean of Gallaudet’s College of Arts and Sciences, and one of the two Deaf candidates for President passed over in favor of Zinser. Caught between his professional relationship with the Hearing Board of Trustees and a cultural one with the Deaf community, King Jordan’s journey across the doc is a fascinating one as the film’s “adult” attempting to navigate the same tenuous peace between the Hearing and Deaf world that his students are motivated to destroy and rebuild in a better, progressive image.
Guggenheim, DiMarco, and Deaf Lens producer Wayne Betts Jr. handle the dramatization of this evolution with visual and sonic aplomb via stylized recreations that uniquely emphasize the Deaf Point of View in what they term “visual noise.” The flashing light mass communication system in dorms and campus buildings becomes an effective visual shorthand for immediate student assembly and activism; the barricading of campus gates with school buses takes on the air of a Soderbergh heist film; cascading waves of dust echo the rage of students pounding on doors and car hoods; and the now-archaic TTY phone system takes on a Watergate-like air as crucial messages encouraging or condemning planned protest actions tick across the screen like secretive encoded messages. Woven seamlessly with the mass of archival at their disposal, DiMarco, Guggenheim, and Betts infuse an already-riveting civil rights documentary with enough drama and flair to make any future Oscar-season biopic seem unnecessary and redundant.
Much like the care taken with Paula Huidobro’s cinematography on CODA, Deaf President Now!’s creative team takes equal pains to capture the natural expressiveness of ASL with commanding and intimate detail. Not only do DiMarco and Guggenheim anticipate the breadth of their subjects’ signing range, but they play the differences and tics in their signing methods against each other to hilarious and heartfelt dramatic effect. Some, like Greg and Tim, were instructed to adapt to Hearing norms by constraining their signing to a small, limited personal bubble; others, like Jerry, reject such ideas entirely–turning any space around them into a reclaimed canvas to paint their words and experience upon. They extend the same insight to the film’s sound design–which works hand in hand with Betts and cinematographer Jonathan Furmanski’s visual style to create an immersive cinematic world that attempts to bridge the Hearing and Deaf experience. The result is a soaringly crowd-pleasing series of montages as our students claw back much-anticipated wins against the Gallaudet administration, with one climactic grin-inducing sequence set to the joyous, earth-shaking beats of ELO’s “Mr. Blue Sky.”
The central interviews–gathering the Gallaudet 4 decades after the protests–are consistently engaging for both Deaf and Hearing audiences, with accessible cinematography enhanced by compelling vocal performances from actors like Leland Orser and Tim Blake Nelson. These performances complement Jerry, Bridgetta, Tim, and Greg’s natural charisma and camaraderie without completely overshadowing them. DiMarco and Guggenheim also highlight key moments where their ASL offers a compelling emotional nuance that voice actors cannot fully translate—illustrating powerfully where this language, distinctly different from English, speaks louder than words. They also capture how the four’s diverging individual experiences with Deafness continue into the present, as participants offer conflicting memories and still-persistent arguments over the efficacy of their methods. It also, in a way, illustrates how the fight to “wake up” the Hearing world to the strength and resilience of the Deaf community is a battle for progress still making progress today.
I would always be an easy mark for a documentary like Deaf President Now!, but I’m genuinely floored by the amount of craft and care displayed in DiMarco’s directorial debut. DiMarco and Guggenheim, along with their Hearing and Deaf cast and crew, create a documentary that functions as a vital document of radical civil rights action as much as it’s a damn good time at the movies. Deaf President Now!’s actions and emotions are louder than life–recognizing how organized collective fury and joy work hand in hand as the best weapons against societies clouded by ignorance and indifference.
Deaf President Now! premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival and will be released by Apple later this year.
