A Sundance Film Festival jury are protesting the screening of the Jonathan Majors-led MagazineDreams over a failure to provide accessible captioning for the film.
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.
SCREENRANT VIDEO OF THE DAY 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.
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.
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.
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