A Sundance Film Festival jury walked out of a screening for Magazine Dreams over failure to provide closed captioning. One of the most famous film festivals in the world, Sundance is the largest independent film festival in the United States, and takes place annually in Salt Lake City, Utah. The festival began in August 1978 in an attempt to draw more filmmakers to Utah, and was taken over by the now-famous Sundance Institute in 1984. Each year, a jury is selected for each prize awarded at Sundance, including Feature Film, U.S. Documentary, and Short Film Program.In a report from Variety, the jury for Sundance's U.S. Dramatic Competition prize walked out of a film screening, due to lack of captioning. The jury collectively decided to walk out of Elijah Bynum's Magazine Dreams after it was discovered that the captioning device wasn't working, making the film inaccessible for deaf and hearing-impaired audience members, including juror and CODA star Marlee Matlin. Sundance has stated that the jurors do still intend to screen the film as a group before the end of the festival.
Why Open Caption Is Very Important In Films
Though the captioning device for the Jonathan Majors-led Magazine Dreams was repaired hours later, the incident comes alongside some major accessibility issues surrounding Sundance. According to reports, the jury has expressed multiple times that it is vastly important that Sundance's films come with open captions, like at other major international film festivals. However, sources have said that filmmakers screening their work at Sundance have declined to provide captioning services, citing the costs and time to produce another print, with some buyers even suggesting that adding captioning to a film could hurt the film's asking prices on the market.
The U.S. Dramatic Competition jury went on to pen a letter to the Sundance Institute, imploring them to provide "open caption DCP" prints to screen at the festival. The letter says that "as a jury our ability to celebrate the work that all of you have put into making these films has been disrupted by the fact that they are not accessible to all three of us." Not only is open caption an important accessibility tool for audiences, but the Magazine Dreams incident proves that it is also vital for those in the film industry, including jurors and critics.
While Sundance certainly bears some responsibility to ensure the films screened at their festival are accessible, this incident also represents a major problem in the film industry, as it is the filmmakers themselves refusing to provide prints with captions. Films need to be accessible, and the idea that embedded captions in a film print can hurt the film's value is deeply rooted in ableism. Though the Magazine Dreams incident should never have happened, it has certainly made an impact on Sundance, and the film festival will likely be much more careful to include accessibility accommodations, especially at a time when such titles as CODA and even Marvel's Hawkeye and Eternals, among others, seek to offer better representation for the deaf and hard-of-hearing communities.
Source: Variety