Bim Ajadi's Night Shift (UK, 2021, short drama) was screened at the 2022 Blackstar Film Festival (3/8/22-7/8/22, Philadelphia, USA).

How do you communicate in a world that finds it difficult to understand you, and is not exactly willing to slow down and accommodate you? How do you convey your emotions where your options are limited, in a world that you feel shut out of? Much is made about how words are not enough, but how about those moments where verbal communication may just not cut it?
More often than not, people with impaired hearing ability struggle to fit into the regular workings of society. They have to be good lip-readers, they find it difficult to convey their feelings because many people do not care enough to pick up sign language, and in spite of agitations for equal opportunities, they face stigmatization on multiple occasions.

British filmmaker, Bim Ajadi, a deaf person himself, has dedicated his career to ensuring that disabled individuals, and in particular those with impaired hearing ability, find full representation in cinema and television. His directorial efforts include the short films Dead Money (2009) and 4 (2014), as well as the TV documentaries Deaf Sisterhood (2011), and the critically-acclaimed Here/Not Here (2020), the latter of which earned him recognition at the British Academy Film Awards (BAFTAs).
Ajadi's most recent film, Night Shift, is a short feature produced in 2021 by U.K-based production company Slick Films, with some input from the Royal Association for Deaf People (RAD). Set in suburban London, it stars Christianah Hodding, Sokari Erekosima, and Perry Mavrides.



Billie (Hodding) is a young black woman who works as a security guard. She cannot hear, she takes active steps to avoid people, and tries to keep up by learning how to read lips. Her closest friend is her co-worker, Jack (Mavrides).
One night, Billie stays back to run a shift, and has to put up with ignoring catcalls. She goes out for a smoke and bumps into a young black man who exhibits reticence. Midway through the shift, she looks through the security cameras and notices that the man has been assaulted at the parking lot. She decides to check on him, much against Jack's entreaties, and in doing that, she opens a previously locked box of emotions.



Ajadi's offering is barely 11 minutes long, but within that (relatively) short runtime, a lot of unspoken communication flows from one end of the screen to another. Words almost lose their power, as a lot is said via the movement of eyes, hands and shoulders instead. Amidst brief but firm stares, each is able to reveal their brokenness to the other, and in drawing out mementos from the past - a cigarette lighter from one jacket, and an unworn engagement ring from the other - they both open up to each other about their respective futile attempts at romance. A purgation occurs when the young man holds Billie in tearful embrace as he mutters a "me too" that is sandwiched between sobs.
The use of tilt shots and extreme closeup shots by Kia Fern Little, the film's Director of Photography, helps with the buildup to what Billie gets to experience during her shift. The cigarette lighter holds some symbolism, too: her struggles to successfully light up her cigarette or that of the young man depict her failure to move on from the memories of her former lover…at least, until that night's encounter.



Night Shift may not be the revolutionary film that suddenly gets everyone to provide more opportunities for the deaf or make more efforts to learn sign language, but it definitely shows that communication transcends verbal cues. Ajadi has clearly come a long way from making copies of films on an old Betamax and putting subtitles on them for his friends, and his work in amplifying representation of the deaf in (British) film is not going to stop any time soon.

Jerry Chiemeke