NEWS RELEASE

 "Hear and Now,” a Sundance audience
favorite documentary film, brings its stars
back to St. Louis

ST. LOUIS, Oct. 2, 2007 – Sponsored by CID - Central Institute for the Deaf in St. Louis, the award-winning documentary film, “Hear and Now,” by Emmy Award-winning director Irene Taylor Brodsky, is scheduled for two screenings at the AT&T St. Louis International Film Festival in November.

FIND OUT MORE
ABOUT THE TAYLORS.

The film tells the deeply personal story of the director’s parents, 1952 CID alumni Sally Hewlett Taylor and Paul Taylor, and their decision at age 65 to undergo cochlear implant surgery, a procedure that could give them the ability to hear. The film was given the Audience Award for Documentary at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. It will be shown at the Tivoli Theatre, 6350 Delmar in University City, at 4:30 p.m. on both Saturday and Sunday, Nov. 10 and 11. Sunday’s screening will be a fully captioned version for the hearing impaired. The Taylors, who live in Rochester, N.Y., will be available for a half-hour question and answer session after each Film Festival screening. 

At the age of 65, after full careers and raising three hearing children, Paul and Sally Taylor had literally spent 65 years in silence, first learning to talk and read lips at CID, then later learning sign language so they could communicate with friends and colleagues in the deaf community as well. Paul’s experiences with technology, including his role as a pioneer in telephone relay technology for the deaf, his work as an engineer in St. Louis and as a professor of computer technology at National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID) at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), predisposed him to curiosity about the cochlear implant, and together the couple embarked on the unique path documented in the film, “Hear and Now.” The film gives an intimate perspective of each experiencing different levels of satisfaction during the first year with the device, and explores the potential for the sense of hearing to fundamentally change the identity of a person and his or her relationships, for better and worse. An intimate memoir, the film follows the Taylors’ complicated journey from a comfortable world of silence to a new and profoundly challenging world of sound.

“Hear and Now” also describes how the couple went to school together at CID, later re-met, fell in love and married. They continue to spend their lives together.
LEARN MORE ABOUT THE TAYLORS AND HELPING DEAF CHILDREN LEARN TO TALK.

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Founded in 1914 by a St. Louis doctor, Max Goldstein, M.D., CID’s mission is to teach children who are deaf and hard of hearing to listen, talk, read and succeed. CID partners with families and collaborates with universities, educators and other professionals worldwide to help children communicate to achieve their fullest potential.

CID prepares deaf and hard of hearing children to participate and succeed in mainstream educational settings. CID teachers use the auditory-oral method, helping children learn to speak, listen and read with proficiency without the use of sign language. CID’s Joanne Parrish Knight Family Center serves children and their families from birth to age 3. CID preschool-kindergarten and primary programs serve students ages 3 to 12. CID students have come from 48 U.S. states and 28 countries.

In addition to its auditory-oral school for deaf children, CID offers assistance for schools with hearing-impaired students, applied educational research, continuing education for professionals, and deaf education assessment tools used to help deaf children in 33 countries worldwide. CID’s proud history of research includes the origin and development of the field and profession of audiology, with breakthrough contributions in infant hearing testing technology, hearing aid fitting methods, powerful digital hearing aid technology and auditory-oral education methods used to help deaf children throughout the world. CID is financially independent from but closely affiliated with CID at Washington University School of Medicine, which operates CID-developed clinic, research and academic programs to benefit people with hearing loss.

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Editor’s Notes:

Sally and Paul Taylor will be available for interviews starting Thursday evening, Nov. 8, and through the weekend. CID school students, teachers and audiologists who are experts on cochlear implants are available anytime at the CID school. Director Irene Taylor Brodsky may also be available, either in person or by phone.