By Jarret Liotta
Shunning the stereotypes that surround portrayals of disabilities in the movies, Chrissy Marshall, a young deaf filmmaker in the San Fernando Valley, intends to help change the status quo.
Marshall, 24, of North Hollywood, is combining her passion for filmmaking with her personal interests in promoting accessibility and opportunity for everyone, regardless of disability.
“Since I’ve gotten to Hollywood I’ve met hundreds of disabled filmmakers, creatives, actors, talent, writers, behind the scenes and in front of, and I’m just really excited to tell those stories,” Marshall said.
Having completed several short narrative films in the past few years, including an award-winning suspense movie called “Hardly What You Want to Hear” and a personal piece called “Rain in My Head,” Marshall is in postproduction on her latest short film effort, which touches on some of her experiences with speech therapy as a youth.
In five years Marshall has established a remarkable following on social media, with more than 120,000 Instagram followers, close to 160,000 YouTube subscribers, and 1.3 million followers on TikTok. And she plans to launch a production company to keep making short narrative films and to pursue feature-length film projects.
Her social media outreach on Instagram, YouTube and TikTok combines humor, insight and opinion centered on her experiences being deaf, including a popular video she made when she got her cochlear implant five years ago. Doctors implanted a tiny electronic device that stimulates the cochlear nerve, providing the brain with signals similar to sound.
Marshall creates instructional pieces such as the “Do’s and Don’t’s of Interacting with Deaf People” and also creates lighter content, such as videos of her using American Sign Language (ASL) to sign along to popular songs.
“There’s a lot of community on social media, but also in terms of reaching … the right audience, for me it was very helpful,” she said. “I feel very fortunate to have built a platform over the past five years with an audience, where I educate about ASL, deaf culture, community, accessibility and just disability awareness in general.”
Marshall sees myriad opportunities to create art that involves and highlights people with disabilities, and she understands the practical side of working within a major market that she can leverage.
“The disability market is a trillion dollar market that is untapped, including caregivers of people with disabilities, so the goal is to show people that it can be done,” she said.
Darcy French-Myerson, a sign language interpreter who is working with Marshall on her newest short film, “Rain,” recognizes the significance of Marshall’s professional plans.
“She’s really important in the community,” French-Myerson said. “I think she’s normalizing accessibility, especially in the arts.”
It’s not about Marshall as a novelty who is able to complete work despite her hearing loss, but about an authentic and unique creator in her own right. “She’s not a token,” French-Myerson said. “She’s the real deal.”
“As a deaf person, I grew up in a hearing family and nobody learned sign language,” she said. “Ninety percent of deaf kids are born into hearing families, most of which don’t learn sign language, so this sort of relates to that — the nuances of specialists in education and speech therapy, and the theme of belonging.”
Born near Frederick, Maryland, Marshall was severely hard of hearing from birth. “That affected a lot of my language,” she said, even though she started speech therapy at age three. “I was behind in school, which kind of impacted everything.”
She was warned that she would be completely deaf by middle school, but she didn’t lose her hearing until high school. “I learned sign language with my speech therapist and different specialists who stepped in at school and in the community,” Marshall said.
A film program she attended in high school drew Marshall to the medium. “I just kind of fell in love with being on a set and learning there,” she said. “Also being deaf is a very visual perspective and I see everything, I’m very observant, and so filmmaking is a perfect outlet for that … And I just love storytelling in general.”
Camilo Godoy, an L.A.-based cinematographer, has worked with Marshall on three projects in the past year including “Rain,” “Rain in My Head,” and “Hardly What You Want to Hear.”
“It has been an amazing and enriching experience for me,” Godoy said. “Working with her has opened my eyes to the world of disabilities, and the need for more accessibility.”Describing Marshall as hard-working and kind, she said, “I’m glad to be working on projects with a deeper meaning.”
Marshall hopes to create more opportunities in the film industry for people with disabilities. “There’s no such thing as an entry-level job that’s accessible,” she said, noting that typical entry-level jobs like working in the mailroom or as a production assistant on a film set are a tougher goal for those with disabilities.
Her peers and experiences led her to understand that she and others need to create their own opportunities.
“It’s just paving your own way and creating your own content,” Marshall said, “and if you do it well, the people who need to see it will see it. There’s a lot of hope and joy in the disability community, uplifting each other and supporting each other’s content. That has really encouraged me to keep going.”
Allison Walter, an actor who has worked with Marshall on several films, is excited to be involved in another project.
“She’s just amazing. She’s incredibly talented, but also really kind,” she said of Marshall. Walter said it wasn’t necessarily different working with a deaf director, but Marshall’s multiple modes of communication — speech and sign language — can offer actors a different angle on the direction given.
“I think it adds an extra layer of communication in a good way,” Walter said. “Chrissy has a lot of passion and I get that, not only through her words, but also in her sign language.”
Communication is at the heart of Marshall’s personal and professional mission, with her primary hope to change and expand how people experience disabilities.
She often felt that the portrayal of disabilities was either “inspirational or the pity subject, and it’s time for those stereotypes to change.” Marshall said, “I’m excited to create more content with disabled talent showing their abilities and unique stories — without falling into tropes.”
Jarret Liotta is a Los Angeles-area-based freelance writer and photographer.
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