My media work often dovetails with other preoccupations in my life and career, ensuring a small but eclectic back catalogue.
I began as a TV researcher collating stories for Vee-TV, the deaf young people’s magazine show produced by Maverick Television/Resource Base for Channel 4, and Ten Years Younger before moving on to my own film-making projects.
As Founder-Director of Salon I commissioned and executive-produced two art documentaries: Salon @ King’s Wood (2006, dir. Joel Kellhofer) and Salon in King’s Wood (2007, dir. Samuel Dore) – as well as shorter film profiles of leading Deaf artists.
While preparing for first time motherhood, I did a spot of broadcast journalism with The Baby Diaries, a popular six-week video diary strand for BBC’s See Hear – during which the idea for my first drama short, CODA (2011), was born.
I have since presented, written and directed Listen, even when your heart is crying (2014), a 27′ documentary about parental grief produced by Neath Films in association with the British Sign Language Broadcasting Trust (BSLBT) (Best Documentary nominee, CINEDEAF 2015 Awards; Offical Selection, Aesthetica Short Film Festival 2015).
Last year I trained with four other Deaf writers as part of ScriptBank, a paid drama screenwriting initiative funded by the BSLBT. The resulting script that I created, the experimental half-hour-long drama Here I Land (2020), is in development.
In 2021, due to on-going pandemic concerns my first theatre play Keeping Hope, a 20-minute monologue commissioned by Deafinitely Theatre in partnership with Paines Plough, was released as a streaming film instead of a live stage performance.
Melissa Mostyn 