“The first time we made a documentary film was in a special school for the deaf and when we had it ready… it was missing a subtitle, it was missing sign language, it was missing a box for sign language… then, we realized – with the same audiovisual production – that lacked a lot of accessibility,” says Viviana Corvalán, director of the documentary “Ultimo Año”, which shows the dilemma that students and their parents experience when finishing basic education and not finding alternatives. to continue secondary education.
The activity was part of the FONAPI project “It is better if we talk about it. Learning and awareness spaces in honor of the diversity and inclusion of people with disabilities”, which is financed by SENADIS and executed by the UOH. With a cycle of 11 activities – including workshops, seminars and conversations – the initiative seeks to promote the right to education, sexual and reproductive rights, labor rights, those in the field of health and the right to participation in cultural and cultural life. recreational, which people with disabilities have. Likewise, it seeks to make five types of disabilities visible: physical, visual, auditory, mental (Autism Spectrum Condition CEA) and organic. All of this, under the #Conciencia-Incluye campaign, as detailed by the coordinator of the Inclusion Unit of the Directorate of Student Affairs, DAE, of the UOH, Carol Uribe.
He explained that “we wanted to share the documentary “Último Año” from the Lóbulo Temporal Foundation because it exposes the difficult reality of deaf people who not only must fight with their own limits but also with those that society constantly imposes on them. Completing secondary education is a huge challenge, because the Chilean educational system has few spaces in conditions to accompany them in their development. The reality of comprehensive education is exposed in the documentary in all its complexity. Students enter schools that are not prepared to receive them, and where their isolation is accentuated by the lack of communication, lack of empathy from their classmates and a system that, apparently, makes little effort to see them and, even less, to listen to them. It is in these realities where inclusive and egalitarian education becomes the teaching modality that human beings deserve, regardless of our condition, race, language,” she pointed out.
The creator, who worked alongside director Francisco Espinoza, notes that “10 or 12 years ago, there was no talk of accessibility, very little of inclusion, then we realized that from our own audiovisual work we had no idea of this other reality, which It has to do with deaf culture and sign language and, from our ignorance and concern, from our own work, we focused on making another film, much deeper and better understood from this other path, and we began to investigate and saw the break that occurs for children and their families when going from basic to secondary education, and how they do not find shelter.”
Education as a right
The exhibition of the documentary took place in the auditorium of the Rancagua Campus of the UOH and included the participation of UOH students and representatives of the Rancagua Deaf Association, ASRA. Its president, Lorena Rebolledo, expressed the importance of exposing these issues. “The history of deaf children is very different from hearing children. I also experienced it when I was younger, so it is important to show and see this documentary. As well as proposing that hearing people must learn sign language, because it is a different culture, it is a culture of the deaf, so, in order to work together, to be able to live together, there must be communication to be able to establish this work. Hearing people must include – within their culture – that there are also deaf children, who learn visually, that they should not be separated without including them, that they should not be discriminated against because education is a right.”
For the co-director of the documentary, Francisco Espinoza, we are “kilometers away from reaching some real inclusion, but it is possible to do so if as a society we commit and the State undertakes to develop the public policy that is required. However, there are little things that each of us can do. In my case, with Viviana, and based on our experience, we decided – when our daughter was born – to teach her to communicate with signs since she was about 6 months old and it was a positive and very enriching experience. And why do I expose it? Because we can teach children from a young age and sign language could be taught in schools in a playful way and we would generate this fundamental communication bridge between the deaf and hearing communities. It’s possible”.
