Young people with hearing and visual impairments were treated to an exclusive cinema experience as SM City Marilao recently held a Special Movie Screening for the Blind and Deaf.
The event took place at SM City Marilao Cinema and was attended by more than 200 participants from Sta. Rosa II Elementary School and DepEd’s Alternative Learning System.
“We wanted our blind and deaf audiences to enjoy the movie like any other movie-going public,” shares SM City Marilao Assistant Mall Manager Drev Fiesta.
Participants enjoyed the film, Oz the Great and Powerful, as it was presented with added features tailored fit to their visual and hearing problems.
Because visual impaired audience would ordinarily miss the action, gestures, facial expressions and scene changes; narrated descriptions are inserted into pauses in between screen dialogues to add context to the story. This feature helps the visually impaired movie-goers to follow the development of the film story.
On the other hand, close captioning, brought a range of emotions to the hearing-impaired through the transcribed audio portion of the movie. This feature describes the sound effects in words while indicating music, laughter, and other human emotions so the deaf audience can read the printed words on the screen.
Closed captioning and audio description are two added elements to meet the needs of people with hearing and visual impairments. It also aims to bring greater accessibility of movies and visual media to PWDs in the Philippines.
SM City Marilao’s Special Movie Screening for the Blind and Deaf is spearheaded by SM Cares, in partnership with AKAP Pinoy, Philippine Blind Union, NCDA, Philippine Foundation for the Rehabilitation of the Disabled, Deaf Blind Support Philippines, Inc., CALL foundation of the Blind, MTRCB and SM Cinema.
Free movie screenings for the blind and deaf at the SM City Marilao are slated on Aug. 1, Nov. 7 and Dec. 5 of 2017. Feature length films include ”Frozen”, ”Pan” and ”The Good Dinosaur”.