Jade Bryan

deaf culture, ASL, deafness, disability, filmmakers, music, accessibility, hear my tune

<p>Ann Marie "Jade" Bryan, born in Kingston, Jamaica, pioneered the Black Deaf Culture genre of film in the early 1990s. She is a natural-born activist who believes in the power of social change. Jade graduated with a BFA degree in film production from one of the world top film schools at Tisch School of the Arts, New York University.</p> <p>A natural-born leader, J A D E is a brand and is an acronym for Jamaican-American Destinee' Empress. She is the founder of Jade Films and Entertainment, LLC; an independent film and entertainment company engaged in the development and production of multi-media technology, video film and high-end fashion shows. Our mission is to raise the consciousness about African-Americans and People of Color (POC) who are Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing, whether culturally deaf or those with varied degrees of hearing loss who identify with or do not identify with Deaf culture. We embrace and promote diversity and feels that we need to actively promote the integration and inclusion of our cultures, stories and themes in the movies, which will allow them the opportunity to be exposed in film or Television. Jade Films also believes in sustaining a commercially informative theme idea, specialty or niche for theatrical, commercial, cable or network releases and high-end products through technology.</p> <p>In 2007, her documentary, "911 Fear in Silence: The Forgotten Underdog" was nominated for Best Produced documentary at the Pan African Film Festival and Everglades International Film Festival (South Africa). Her first feature film, "If You Could Hear My Own Tune" was featured at the Roxbury International Film Festival and SF Black Film Festival in 2011. Her film is still touring the film festival seeking distribution.</p> <p>EARLY PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE</p> <p>Jade has worked as a Production Assistant for the movie, "Boomerang," produced by Warrington Hudlin and directed by Reginald Hudlin in the early 90's. She also served as a Second Assistant Director for Zeinabu irene Davis' film, "Compensation." She was also invited to observe and work side-by-side with Jonathan Demme for his movie, "Beloved," which starred Oprah Winfrey as the lead and who was one of the producers of the film.</p> <p>During a lunch break, Jonathan introduced Jade to Oprah, which was a huge honor because she is a huge fan of Oprah. In 1991, Oprah donated a check of $1000 to her production company for her short film, "Cutting The Edge of a Free Bird," a student project she did while studying filmmaking at NYU. Her short film won several awards at the film festivals. From short to a full-fledged feature, the new title is now "The Double Life of Zhane Rain." She is seeking production funds so she can start filming in February 2013. It is her dream to have Oprah attach to the project as one of the executive producers for this film. She would like to pay homage to Oprah by naming a fictional educational institution, Harpo University in her honor. Harpo U. is the world's only and first ever African-American, Deaf liberal arts and technology university. Like Howard, Spelman, Morehouse, Grambling State University, why can't we have one in real life for African-American Deaf and Hard of Hearing students? She's like for that to happen.</p>

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