The Heart of the Hydrogen Jukebox

Gabby Hopkinson


This entry is cross posted on her blog, Happy-Shock.Com. She shares many other reviews on her blog as well.

I caught most of the showings at the first Seattle Deaf Film Festival and I have to say my favorite feature film was The Heart of the Hydrogen Jukebox. I’m gonna talk about that one. My favorite dramatic short was Exit the Sun, of which I already blogged about here a while ago, link to short movie included!

The Heart of the Hydrogen Jukebox is a two hour long documentary about the ASL poetry movement that came roaring out of Rochester, NY back in the 1980s. Sidenote: Rochester is the city in America with the highest number of deaf people. All kinds of people far and near took notice, including Allen Ginsberg who met with the Deaf poets and traded ideas with them. In fact, the title of this documentary is inspired by him and something he once wrote – and derived from the group discussion that was actually filmed and is now shown in this documentary!

By watching this documentary, we see the first-hand stories and experiences from the people at the center of the ASL poetry madness. Peter Cook. Ella Mae Lentz. Patrick Graybill. Bernard Bragg. Their memorable performances were also shown via clips. Before, it was considered proper that you sign the words of the poetry as the words are written. Nah, not necessarily. One perfect example is the translation of Lewis Carroll’s The Jabberwocky into ASL poetry by Eric Malzkuhn. He went absolutely wild in his translation and it worked beautifully! People’s minds were absolutely blown.

Plenty of good footage and another great segment that still sticks in my mind is Debbie Rennie’s ASL poem telling about her love affair with chocolate. The whole theater was laughing like crazy. It was very cool to see those Deaf poets take the liberty to tell stories through the art of ASL.
If you haven’t seen The Heart of the Hydrogen Jukebox, do get your hands on a copy!

The next Seattle Deaf Film Festival will be in 2014. What are we going to see this time?!

Editor's Note: I just had to add this excerpt from the film - where Patrick Graybill translates "The Hydrogen Jukebox" in ASL as per Allen Ginsberg's request.  This is a historical and exciting moment in Deaf history!