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.
In 1908, an outlaw returns from years of hiding in Mexico to claim stolen gold hidden in the hills of Montana. TICKETS Mario Van
“Melting Greenland” – Chief Director Steven Ko The 21st Oakland International Film Festival kicks off with two films we hope can inspire future generations to
PURCHASE TICKETS In 1919, black workers’ decades-long efforts to challenge exploitation in the Arkansas Delta culminated in the nation’s deadliest racial massacre and labor battle.
The 21st Oakland International Film Festival; kicks off September 14th – 23rd, 2023 Some say, “to start with the end”…while some say, “you think it
