Diana Anselmo is a performer and deaf author. Italian and Italian Sign Language (LIS) bilingual, while studying for her degree in Theatre and Performing Arts she debuted with her first performance Autoritratto in 3 atti in 2021, still featured in various Italian and international contexts. Abroad, she debuted in Berlin, where she performed with artists of the calibre of Xavier Le Roy in Le Sacre du Printemps (2022). She is one of the founders of Al.Di.Qua. Artists, the first European association for disabled artists.

Je Vous Aime, where Anselmo performs on stage with Sara, focuses on a short film, so short as to last only one second. In 1891, four years before the Lumière’s premiere, Georges Demenÿ invented the phonoscope, an instrument capable of making the first moving projection of all times: his own face while he says «Je vous aime».

Starting from history, this lecture-performance reveals how the first video ever made was created to teach labial reading to deaf people, after the abolition of sign languages in 1880. Staged in a multimedia space that includes videos, LIS and Visual Sign, Je Vous Aime starts from the pre-cinematic era to discuss the story of the deaf community’s oppression.