Recaps of documentaries on Marlee Matlin and Deaf President Now

I watched both of the “Deaf documentaries” that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January. I watched them online and I’ll give a bit of a recap.

The first is “Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore,” a documentary directed by Shoshannah Stern, who is also Deaf.

The documentary is 1 hour and 38 minutes long and it has a lot of fascinating footage from the time surrounding Marlee Matlin’s career when she won her Academy Award at 21 years old. There are many clips of young Marlee at various moments of when she was a star in Hollywood. It was eye-opening to see how things were like back then.

The documentary had Shoshannah doing interviews with Marlee and many others who were in her orbit, such as her childhood friend Liz Tannenbaum, her interpreter and business partner Jack Jason, fellow Oscar winner Troy Kotsur, Henry Winkler, Lauren Ridloff, Aaron Sorkin, John Maucere.

The documentary described moments where Marlee was thrust into the role of an advocate for deaf people, such as doing an interview with “Nightline” during the Deaf President Now protests, advocating with news outlets for captioning on all TV shows, and fighting for authentic deaf actors on the “CODA” film.

There is a lot of poignant moments that shows Marlee’s family and her relationships with her siblings. The documentary also covered how Marlee was a survivor of abuse from her former partner, actor William Hurt, and how she later found love and made a family with her husband, Kevin.

That’s the recap, there’s a lot more things in the documentary. Matlin recently announced that the documentary will be a part of the SXSW 2025 Film Festival in March. It is not known when the documentary will be released for public viewing, but whenever that happens, I’ll let you know.

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The second documentary is “Deaf President Now!,” co-directed by Nyle DiMarco (Deaf) and Davis Guggenheim.

It is 1 hour and 41 minutes long and it is a mix of archival footage, sit-down interviews with the four leaders of the DPN protests, and re-enactments using actors. Dr. I. King Jordan also sat down for interviews — a rare opportunity to see him these days.

The documentary jumps back and forth from the day-to-day progression of the week of the DPN protests in 1988 to the livelihoods of the DPN leaders and how their identities as a deaf person were shaped by their families and the “hearing world”’s perceptions. These scenes were dovetailed with the DPN’s villain, Gallaudet Board of Trustees Jane Bassett Spilman, who was portrayed as the ultimate audist and oppressor.

There was some incredible footage of real-time events during the DPN protests. You may recognize some people who are well-known in the Deaf community while they were Gallaudet students.

There was some new information in the DPN that I didn’t know about the four student leaders and about some of the tension between them.

That’s all that I have to share about the DPN documentary. It was acquired by Apple TV+. They have not yet released it on their platform, only saying it’s “coming at a later date.” When it’s available, I’ll let you know.

The two documentaries will definitely be a huge resource for today and future generations who want to understand more about Deaf culture and Deaf identity.