Accessibility in Virtual Film Festivals

I accidentally saw my first captioned cinema screening when I was sixteen years old (Star Wars: The Force Awakens); fast forward six years later, and I’m a freelance film writer shouting on Twitter about subtitles and access. I’m not the first person you expect to see at the cinema, as I balance my popcorn in one hand, and hold my red and white cane in the other. The accusing question: “Why would a deaf and blind person bother watching a film?” follows me everywhere. I’ve seldom felt like a valued or desired audience member in the world of multiplex cinemas and film festivals. It wasn’t until I discovered my local independent cinema, and exhibitors and festivals such as Matchbox Cineclub, SQIFF, and Take One Action, that I realised that I am just as important as any other audience demographic. Captions are not a substitute for sound; they’re a means of inclusion. Accommodations such as captions and audio description provide a gateway to shared information and experiences, so that D/deaf and blind people aren’t left behind.

When it comes to access, the moviegoing experience has a long way to go, particularly within mainstream cinema. The emergence of a worldwide pandemic has drastically affected the film exhibition industry, with cinephiles and film critics clinging to morsels of cinematic excitement and hype, constantly scrolling, and refreshing for release dates and online film festivals. The virtual aspect of festivals in 2020 has shone a light on accessibility; a word that has since been appropriated by some to garner praise or to tick a box. The concept of an online festival poses significant potential for access, with options such as captions and audio description allowing audience members to opt for accommodated screenings if need be. Unfortunately, this advantage has not been prioritised by many major film festivals, many of whom have yet again left disabled and D/deaf audiences behind. What’s stopping festivals from providing access to deaf and blind audiences? How can festivals prioritise access?

The 64th BFI London Film Festival 2020 has just completed its run, with film screenings that took place both online and in selected cinemas throughout the UK. This year’s festival had closed captioning and audio description options available for a portion of the programme, both online and in cinemas. I spoke with London Film Festival Producer Olivia Howe and Festival Director Tricia Tuttle to discuss access for this year’s virtual edition.

    How important is access to the BFI London Film Festival?
Very important. We also recognised that this year with so many films and our events on virtual platforms for the first time, we have had an opportunity to deliver our most accessible LFF ever.

Was there any consultation with disabled and D/deaf people/organisations?

For the BSL interpreted elements, we have worked with Interpreters Direct for many years, who have provided BSL interpretation for festival and year-round events. We also had conversations with Performance Interpreting and Carve. We are working with Carve on BSL interpretation for all of our Screen Talk, Young Programmer and discursive events. We hope to extend this further in future years. Three Play Media delivered Closed Captioning and Engine House delivered Audio Description.

What challenges did BFI London Film Festival encounter whilst trying to provide captions and audio description for the programme?

One of the biggest challenges faced every year is with the availability of accessible materials for our festival titles. This is caused by a number of factors: BFI London Film Festival have a minimum premiere criteria of UK Premiere and are often very new; films are sometimes so new that they are being edited or re-edited in the weeks just before the premiere. Even with less ‘hot off the press’ titles, many films don’t have release dates set until the following year, and as a result of this, where the films have a distributor in the UK, we often find that distributors have not yet created accessible materials that they can share with the festival. As we mentioned above, this year as a response to COVID, this version of LFF a very different kind of Festival with all talks and events delivered online and 54 of our 60 feature film premieres available on our virtual cinema at the BFI Player. When we decided revert to this model in late June, we also made a big resource commitment for the Festival to create accessible materials for the online screenings where they did not already exist. We set out a plan to close caption all of the English language features, shorts and events, (and audio describe) all of the English language short films. All of our Screen Talks and discursive events would have closed captioned and BSL interpretation and our Live Events speech to text access. In the end on the digital platforms, we have delivered against our short film and talk/event goals above, and have 26 English language feature length titles with Closed Captioning, and a further 22 non-English language features with subtitles throughout. We did run into a number of hurdles – the biggest of which was timelines for creating materials with many final files not available to us until very late as the rights-holder were still taking delivery of them. This meant many delays to being able to announce a full list of films which would be accessible before booking started and in some instances it meant we were unable to turn around and QC closed-caption subtitles to an appropriate standard within our time frames.

What can festivals/the wider film industry do to avoid these problems?

Often films without distributors do not have the funds to be able to create these materials themselves. Factoring this in to festival budgets and timelines at an early point could enable creation of these materials for us not just for one festival, but internationally. In general, we worked more collaboratively with other film festivals this year than we ever have, sharing information and learnings as we remodeled our events in response to COVID. We could build on these new lines of communication to ensure that Festivals which share a language could work together support rights holders with creation of access materials at the earliest stages possible.

In terms of access, what do you hope for future editions of LFF?

We’d love to build upon this year and make as many of our festival titles and events as accessible through closed caption subtitling, audio description, BSL interpretation and other measures. This should be across in-venue and digital screenings.

For access to become a focus point, disabled audiences must become a priority, and not an afterthought. Infrastructural redesign is desperately needed, along with a widespread attitude shift within film exhibition. Conversations, communication, and collaboration are pillars for this shift, reshaping access into an initial planning stage. Distributors must learn to value disabled audiences, instead of prematurely releasing inaccessible content for festival season. Festivals have too often been left to create their own captions or audio description files, simply because the distributors themselves haven’t created accessible materials for their own films. Allyship and a cry for accountability from filmmakers, film critics, and audiences is essential for progress. What are you doing to support disabled and D/deaf audiences? – Charlotte Little