This film is a part-talkie. The most famous part-talkie is probably Chaplin's Modern Times , which was seen as a bit of an anomaly when it came out. There are very few movies like this, and I've often wondered what it would be like if people had kept making them. Guy Maddin kind of does it, but his films are so often about nostalgia and the narrativization of the past. What matters about silent film in Brand Upon the Brain , for instance, is that it's thought to be a thing of the past. Compensation alternates between one story that takes place in 1911 and another that takes place in 1993. The two stories focus on deaf, Black women living in Chicago, Malindy in 1911 and Malaika in 1993, both played by Michelle A. Banks. They both fall in love with hearing men, Arthur and Nico, but have friends in the deaf community with doubts about whether their romances can succeed. Scenes in the 1911 story use intertitles more often than scenes i...
"We are in the world, not against it." - Ursula K. Le Guin