When Toronto Short Film Festival organizers told deaf filmmaker and artist Chella Man they couldn’t offer accommodations like ASL interpreters or captioning for deaf and hard-of-hearing attendees, he wasn’t surprised. Still, he pulled his film Why Do People Want to Be Remembered from the fest. Aptly, his film tackles the challenges faced by those who are deaf and hard-of-hearing, specifically when they have to rely on often-glitchy technology.
“We want the most diverse, inclusive, pushing-the-narrative stories,” says Man of the mandate from many festivals for submissions. “But the mission statement just doesn’t reflect their action.”
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Earlier this year, a Sundance Film Festival jury walked out of the premiere for the Jonathan Majors-starring Magazine Dreams when it became clear that the captioning device for Dramatic Competition jury member and Academy Award-winning actress Marlee Matlin was malfunctioning at the start of the film. While disability representation is increasingly being touted by major festivals, accessibility for deaf and hard-of-hearing attendees remains limited and requirements vary wildly, with some having none at all.
The standards at TIFF are still being determined, for example, while Sundance and SXSW require closed captions for all submitted films. Most festival viewers will access those through a Dolby CaptiView device, a small in-seat display that shows captions as the film plays. The tech is highly susceptible to malfunctions, so deaf film producer and vice chair of RespectAbility Delbert Whetter says the Sundance situation was “no surprise” to him. “You are providing deaf people with something that we know has a high rate of failure,” Whetter explains. “You don’t want to have something that relies on training and upkeep when you have a volunteer staff.” (Dolby did not respond to a request for comment.)
Just a few years ago, talk about accessibility at festivals was minimal. During the COVID-19 pandemic, festivals were forced online, where they became more accessible due to the lack of physical barriers present at in-person festivals. With an in-person return imminent, conversations about accessibility at film festivals began to take off. “At the last Sundance Festival in 2020, things were different,” says projectionist Jon Bastian, a veteran of multiple film festivals including Sundance, of recent strides in accessibility for deaf attendees. He adds, “In two or three years, things have ramped up substantially.” (Projectionists like Bastian can be called upon to oversee the captioning hardware at festivals.)
Sundance has long been generally seen as an industry leader in accessibility for deaf attendees. Nonetheless, this year, it ran headlong into controversy. When Matlin was named to the U.S. Dramatic jury, Sundance requested that filmmakers in that competition section also provide open caption copies of their films, in addition to the required closed captions. (Open caption subtitles are embedded into the film image in editing, while closed captions are displayed via an outside device.)
After the incident at the Magazine Dreams screening, reports painted filmmakers as having refused to provide open captions for artistic reasons, but multiple filmmakers tell THR the request came down just before the industrywide holiday break, leaving them scrambling, and they would have provided open caption copies if they had been given the mandate earlier. (Indie directors will often write a unique script for captions to ensure that they’re properly timed to onscreen action, which takes several weeks in postproduction and can cost thousands of dollars.) With that in mind, Sundance accessibility manager Laura Benge says they’ve taken note and “recognize [open captioning] is something filmmakers need time in advance to work into their budgets [and] production of their films.”
At Sundance, CaptiView devices are tested extensively before screenings, note festival organizers, and Matlin’s device was functioning within a few minutes of the theater staff being informed of the malfunction. Because CaptiView is a wireless system, it is susceptible to failure if there are issues with a theater’s Wi-Fi, or if a device is located far away from the central transmitter, which is usually near the projection booth.
At festivals, Bastian suggests there should be a staff member whose only job is caring for captioning tech and other theater-based accessibility needs. This year, SXSW brought on an accessibility operations specialist to handle accommodation requests and upgraded outdated CaptiView devices for Dolby’s newer captioning tech, Dolby Accessibility Solution.
While general accessibility at international fests like Cannes and Venice remains limited, open captioning is more common because the global audience is already used to local-language or English subtitles. Last year, advocacy group FWD-Doc (which stands for Documentary Filmmakers With Disabilities) published a press release calling out Cannes for its major lack of accessibility, including a lack of wheelchair-accessible routes into venues like the famed Grand Lumière theater. Soon after, the organization partnered with Film Festival Alliance to launch the Accessibility Scorecard, an online questionnaire template for users to provide feedback about their experience at a festival. Advocates like FWD-Doc interim director and deaf film producer Amanda Upson note the scorecard is a way for festivals to work directly with deaf attendees to build a usable infrastructure for accessibility.
There is no silver bullet, but activists and advocates say open captioning is the best course of action if festivals want to create an equitable experience. “There is no sense of separation of privilege or class with open captions,” says Whetter. But SXSW’s senior manager of film fest programming, Gabe Van Amburgh, says there has been some creative pushback. He says, “A lot of filmmakers are still very precious about everything that’s on the screen.”
As it stands, even at the biggest festivals, deaf and hard-of-hearing attendees themselves must request accommodations and confirm availability of captioning tech. And there’s tension over responsibility: Festivals put the onus on filmmakers, who in turn want more direction as to what they should be providing. “We don’t want to be reactive and just pass responsibility to the filmmaker,” says Benge. “Accessibility has to be a shared commitment to actually implement change.”
“You have to remember that this is really an ecosystem. It’s an issue that we all need to come together to help move forward,” adds TIFF COO Beth Janson.
Man says festivals might live up to their hype if “they intentionally consider the time and expense it requires to authentically state their festival is accessible.”
A version of this story first appeared in the April 26 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
