Alison O'Daniel

A spate of robberies in Southern California schools had an oddly specific target: tubas. In this work of creative nonfiction, d/Deaf first-time feature director Alison O’Daniel presents the impact of these crimes from an unexpected angle. The film unfolds mimicking a game of telephone, where sound’s feeble transmissibility is proven as the story bends and weaves to human interpretation and miscommunication. The result is a stunning contribution to cinematic language. O’Daniel has developed a syntax of deafness that offers a complex, overlaid, surprising new texture, which offers a dimensional experience of deafness and reorients the audience auditorily in an unfamiliar and exhilarating way.

Night Sky is the story of two friends' journey through the desert into a synesthetic realm of the senses. After their car breaks down, Cleo and Jay discover a small portal that leads to another dimension where a dance marathon never ends, time collapses, and exhaustion is rampant. The girls travel to a sound chamber deep in the desert where they encounter a speaking dog that offers them a vision of their place in the universe.. Meanwhile, the exhausted marathon contestants continue shuffling their feet with no end in sight.

Using the soundtracks of disaster movies as material, A Disaster is an almost entirely imageless film; comprised of sound and text, it is centered on the physical comprehension of subsonic frequencies, tactile sound, and how experiences of sonic violence mirror the relentless ubiquity of ableism.

Horns blare and sound softly through thick LA air.

Deaf artist Christine Sun Kim signs the final scene in which the main character, Nyke, goes skinny dipping with her boyfriend Nature Boy. Three narrative versions of the story unfold simultaneously—the written screen-play, a version told by Christine in American Sign Language, and a voiceover reciting the exact English translation of Christine's teleprompter notes.

A spate of robberies in Southern California schools had an oddly specific target: tubas. In this work of creative nonfiction, d/Deaf first-time feature director Alison O’Daniel presents the impact of these crimes from an unexpected angle. The film unfolds mimicking a game of telephone, where sound’s feeble transmissibility is proven as the story bends and weaves to human interpretation and miscommunication. The result is a stunning contribution to cinematic language. O’Daniel has developed a syntax of deafness that offers a complex, overlaid, surprising new texture, which offers a dimensional experience of deafness and reorients the audience auditorily in an unfamiliar and exhilarating way.

A spate of robberies in Southern California schools had an oddly specific target: tubas. In this work of creative nonfiction, d/Deaf first-time feature director Alison O’Daniel presents the impact of these crimes from an unexpected angle. The film unfolds mimicking a game of telephone, where sound’s feeble transmissibility is proven as the story bends and weaves to human interpretation and miscommunication. The result is a stunning contribution to cinematic language. O’Daniel has developed a syntax of deafness that offers a complex, overlaid, surprising new texture, which offers a dimensional experience of deafness and reorients the audience auditorily in an unfamiliar and exhilarating way.

A spate of robberies in Southern California schools had an oddly specific target: tubas. In this work of creative nonfiction, d/Deaf first-time feature director Alison O’Daniel presents the impact of these crimes from an unexpected angle. The film unfolds mimicking a game of telephone, where sound’s feeble transmissibility is proven as the story bends and weaves to human interpretation and miscommunication. The result is a stunning contribution to cinematic language. O’Daniel has developed a syntax of deafness that offers a complex, overlaid, surprising new texture, which offers a dimensional experience of deafness and reorients the audience auditorily in an unfamiliar and exhilarating way.

Night Sky is the story of two friends' journey through the desert into a synesthetic realm of the senses. After their car breaks down, Cleo and Jay discover a small portal that leads to another dimension where a dance marathon never ends, time collapses, and exhaustion is rampant. The girls travel to a sound chamber deep in the desert where they encounter a speaking dog that offers them a vision of their place in the universe.. Meanwhile, the exhausted marathon contestants continue shuffling their feet with no end in sight.

Night Sky is the story of two friends' journey through the desert into a synesthetic realm of the senses. After their car breaks down, Cleo and Jay discover a small portal that leads to another dimension where a dance marathon never ends, time collapses, and exhaustion is rampant. The girls travel to a sound chamber deep in the desert where they encounter a speaking dog that offers them a vision of their place in the universe.. Meanwhile, the exhausted marathon contestants continue shuffling their feet with no end in sight.

Night Sky is the story of two friends' journey through the desert into a synesthetic realm of the senses. After their car breaks down, Cleo and Jay discover a small portal that leads to another dimension where a dance marathon never ends, time collapses, and exhaustion is rampant. The girls travel to a sound chamber deep in the desert where they encounter a speaking dog that offers them a vision of their place in the universe.. Meanwhile, the exhausted marathon contestants continue shuffling their feet with no end in sight.

Using the soundtracks of disaster movies as material, A Disaster is an almost entirely imageless film; comprised of sound and text, it is centered on the physical comprehension of subsonic frequencies, tactile sound, and how experiences of sonic violence mirror the relentless ubiquity of ableism.

Horns blare and sound softly through thick LA air.

Deaf artist Christine Sun Kim signs the final scene in which the main character, Nyke, goes skinny dipping with her boyfriend Nature Boy. Three narrative versions of the story unfold simultaneously—the written screen-play, a version told by Christine in American Sign Language, and a voiceover reciting the exact English translation of Christine's teleprompter notes.