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According to the US writer, Rhodes Scholar and disability advocate Rachel Kolb, who was born with bilateral hearing loss, the word ‘lip-reading’ is a misnomer. It’s a means of communication replete with challenges, including but not limited to mumbling, accents, hairy faces and unusually shaped mouths. Even under the most ideal circumstances, with a clear view of someone’s lips in a one-on-one conversation, it can feel like ‘putting together a puzzle without all the pieces’. Based on Kolb’s essay ‘Seeing at the Speed of Sound’ (2013), this inventive short film from the US director David Terry Fine captures the precarious business of trying ‘to grasp, with one sense, information intended for another’.
Director: David Terry Fine
Producer: Jeremy Summer
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Music
The peculiar beauty of a song caught between composition and improvisation
3 minutes
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Rituals and celebrations
A beginner’s guide to a joyful Persian tradition of spring renewal and rebirth
3 minutes
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Love and friendship
Love looks a bit different for a chain-smoking couple in a small apartment
11 minutes
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Biography and memoir
Passed over as the first Black astronaut, Ed Dwight carved out an impressive second act
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Engineering
A close-up look at electronic paper reveals its exquisite patterns – and limitations
9 minutes
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Architecture
West Africa was once an architectural laboratory. Is it time for a revival?
12 minutes
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Work
A Swedish expat in the Philippines wonders: what’s up with people sleeping at work?
14 minutes
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Biography and memoir
The unique life philosophy of Abdi, born in Somalia, living in the Netherlands
29 minutes
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Cognition and intelligence
What’s this buzz about bees having culture? Inside a groundbreaking experiment
8 minutes