Over the past few years, it’s thankfully become more common to find screenings with closed captioning at your local multiplex. Not just theaters that hand out closed captioning devices — which often require another layer of artifice between the audience and the movie — but actual onscreen captions. And while you might assume that a major American festival like the Sundance Film Festival would be a trendsetter in this regard, it appears that the opposite is true — and that the issue of closed captioning has become a major controversy at this year’s screenings.
According to Variety, members of the Sundance competition jury walked out of the premiere of “Magazine Dreams” when a faulty caption device was given to juror Marlee Matlin — effectively making it impossible for her to participate in the screening. The articles notes that the device was repaired “hours later,” but that this issue inspired members of the jury to write an open letter to festival filmmakers to encourage them to include “open caption DCP” prints. “The U.S. independent cinema movement began as a way to make film accessible to everyone,” Variety quotes, “not just those with the most privileges among us.”
According to Variety‘s sources, several filmmakers have rejected requests to have onscreen captioning, citing the “costs and time associated with making another print” as their reasoning. Variety even cites concern that onscreen captioning could make films less desirable to potential buyers — a stupefying piece of commentary that will hopefully warrant its own piece of investigative journalism from one of the onsite trades.
Setting aside the accessibility issues that a lack of closed captioning raises — which, one should note, are reason enough to implement changes — this conflict is happening at a time where movie audiences have become accustomed (or even dependent on) closed captioning in their home viewing experiences. Studies even suggest that younger audiences view closed captioning as an essential part of their viewing experience, with 70% of Gen Z in particular reporting that they use subtitles “most of the time” during home viewing experiences. All of which is to say that there has never been a better degree of both awareness and acceptance for the utility of closed captioning, and it feels like a significant missed opportunity to not embrace that wholeheartedly.