Ann Marie
Bryan (who goes by the nom-de-plume
Queen Jade) is the FIRST (her capital letters, not mine) Jamaican-American deaf
filmmaker who proudly calls herself “a pioneer in her own right.” And who’s going to argue with that?
She has been producing and writing films for over 20
years and her previous feature film, If
You Could Hear My Own Tune, was accepted into several film festivals, including 2011’s San Francisco Black Film Festival and Roxbury International Film Festival.
As she says, she believes “in social change and social justice and believes
in promoting, spreading and increasing awareness about the lack of Deaf
African-American actors cast in roles in the mainstream movie industry and in
television.”
And one major area of concern for her is the huge lack of
representation of black deaf culture, adding that the media at large “lacks
representation addressing issues regarding diversity, intersectionalities and
Deaf People of Color. We all have stories to share, so many!”
As the result of that goal, Ms. Bryan has launched an
Indiegogo campaign to raise $75,000
to produce four original films she intends to make.
The first project, the
feature film The Shattered Mind, is now in post-production with the aim of
being done in time to submit to the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival and 2015
Cannes Film Festival.
She calls Shattered Mind “a psychodrama and surreal story
about a hard-of-hearing teenager who juggles family, peer and culture conflicts
while in search of her own sexual identity, freedom, and self-realization.”
The film’s protagonist, Zhane Rain, is an intense and
carefree high school senior with three generations of hearing and deaf family
members who unravels family secrets behind the traumatic brain injury that
caused her deafness.
Ms. Bryan is also currently developing two new
TV-oriented pilots for 2014. The first one, The
Two Essences, is a contemporary story about a modern-day deaf
mother-daughter relationship; a day trader mother, who one day quit her job
to go back to school.
The other TV pilot is titled Kaomi’s Three Charms, about a New York hard-of-hearing filmmaker
who befriends a deaf playwright, an actor and a musician.
But Ms. Bryan soldiers on, as she says, “because I am persistent and
relentless. I believe in the cause. I am passionate about my films, my
community… We are constantly being ignored, being shoved on the sidelines.
Marginalized as we call it. I am determined to change that.“
To contribute to her Indiegogo campaign, click HERE or within the widget below:
