- Before "Deafula" was produced, there was no other form of entertainment for the Deaf community that talked about Deaf culture.

We were trying to do something that had never been done before for a population that had prior to this time been almost invisible.

My name is Gary Holstrom.

I am the producer, production manager and a number of other talents for the film "Deafula" that we made in 1975.

(dramatic music) During the 1970s, sign language became hugely popular, probably because this invisible handicap which people have always known as deafness came to light.

With the Civil Rights movement, with the use of sign language in the classroom, it became very popular with a lot of people, folks going to community colleges and taking classes.

Usually there was very little in the form of entertainment for the Deaf community.

Going to theaters and watching "Jaws," or "Rocky Horror Picture Show," or "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," Deaf folks were sitting in auditoriums that projected feature films, but had captioning.

So the excitement of cinema was lost in the time it took them to read the captioning.

What we did was, first of all, we focused everything on American Sign Language, and the Deaf community, and as much about Deaf culture as we could.

(upbeat music) ♪ Doo, doo, doo, doo, doo ♪ - Is this thing on?

Oh, it is.

Okay, listen, man.

Hi, my name is Wolf Wechsberg.

Wolf Wex for short.

We'd like to invite all you groovy dudes to check out our flick "Deafula."

It's got to be the first full-length feature.

Man, this thing runs 95 minutes in length.

Produced entirely in sign language.

Can you dig it?

- We first went to the Deaf community.

The biggest amount of people that we found were at the Washington State School for the Deaf in Vancouver, and many of those people, students as well as their instructors and their professors, ended up being our key actors in the film.

Independent filmmakers in Portland just showed up and said, "I'll do rack focus for you.

I'll do this for you.

I'll do this."

A lot of people just came and said, "How can we help?"

Which was just phenomenal.

I did have a role in "Deafula."

It was the role of Dracula.

I was fluent enough that they didn't feel that there would be any issue.

Since I was always sitting in the background writing checks, maybe they just felt sorry for me, so they gave me that role.

(jaunty music) This is gonna be the most dramatic scene in the film.

He walked down the stairs of the Pittock Mansion through a doorway, which put us into the cave.

Then he went toward this casket, and in that casket was Dracula.

While I was in the coffin with a stake in my heart in all my regalia, and I fell asleep in the coffin.

So the first take didn't go very well.

I wasn't supposed to be surprised.

Let's put it that way.

I think people need to realize that sign language is extremely emotional.

It's visceral.

It's exciting.

It's quite beautiful in many senses.

And now compare that with a Shakespearean production where you've got a lot more hand movements, you got a lot more expressiveness, kind of exaggeration.

And then the other part about the film is that it has a lot of silence.

There are scenes where there's no sound effects, there's no captioning, no lip movements, there's no sign language, and it just rolls on.

And that's very hard for hearing folks to understand, and it seems quite weird at times.

But for the Deaf folks, it's life.

It's what they experience every day.

There are no silent times for them.

Just know that silent, unspoken times when you're waiting for somebody else to say something, that uncomfortable feeling, they don't have that kind of a feeling.

We knew there were gonna be a difficult time getting a lot of Deaf folks to come to a theater.

There was never a reason for them to go to a theater before.

They weren't captioning features on a theater screen, and so they just never went to a theater.

But when we got them there and let them know that this is really gonna happen, then it was a real thrill.

Peter and I gave a little presentation right off the bat, and then we premiered.

I think the film arrived in the projection booth about a half an hour before we started getting up on stage.

Since I was also a director of sound, which was kind of a minor role for our Deaf film, I thought it was a great idea if we could drive low frequency sound into the auditorium.

Certain types of vibrations, especially a lot of low frequency sounds, Deaf folks really love it.

And I can attest the many times that I was in the auditorium during "Deafula," there were screams by the Deaf folks when they felt that.

People who are deaf would laugh, scream but different times than people who were hearing.

You could just feel the joy of these people who have never experienced anything like that.

(audience applauding) (gentle somber music) (gentle somber music continues)