Invisible Difference is a documentary directed by 21-year-old Australian filmmaker Emma Shadbolt. The documentary follows Charles , a man who was born deaf, and includes interviews with his parents.
Charles’ parents (Chas and Sue) recount their son’s journey as he grew up and married his wife, Neoliza. Neoliza is also deaf. Charles’ parents honestly recount the complexity of raising a child with a hearing impairment. However, they are never negative about these parenting difficulties. They instead confess where they may have initially struggled, from a place of self-compassion. They also recount his experience learning to sign and how much this benefited him.
Through a deaf camp, Charles told a pastor he met in South Korea that he would really like to get married and have a wife. He enquired if the pastor knew of anyone else looking for a partner. Through the pastor, Charles eventually met Neoliza. Neoliza is from the Philippines and is also deaf. Initially the two struggled to communicate due to the differences in signing between Auslan and FSL. They eventually learnt to communicate by picking up the differences in the way they sign. Quickly they learnt each other’s languages. Charles’ father even notes that things like the Australian sense of humour are transmutable through the way deaf people sign. A common misconception is that humour does not translate.
The documentary’s core theme is that despite the complexities or differences presented by a hearing disability, it’s integral to remember that retreating from individuals who are deaf is inarguably a lot worse than attempting to communicate and include them.
As a documentary, the message is important and pretty nuanced. Particularly in the inclusion of how dehumanising it may be to assume that someone with a hearing impairment cannot understand humour or is too difficult to communicate with. Often these perceived issues boil down to a neutral difference in communication at their core.
There are a few problems with the pacing of the documentary, but understand many of my critiques have the same answer; this is a film with a very small budget. I will say I wish we had learnt more about Neoliza’s perspective and some of her upbringing as I feel like these would be really interesting insights. I also found that aspects such as Deaf Camp and Deaf Ministries were not easily understandable concepts to someone outside of these communities and I wish a little of that explanation could have been present as I did struggle to retain what faith or community the story took place in.
But all in all, I think this film has a really interesting verdict. It is truly great at capturing the complexity of communication and the desire for inclusion. I really hope it gets more traction and develops from there as these are really good sentiments.
