Metro Manila Film Festival 2023’s Best Picture film “Firefly” will become accessible to people with visual impairment this Saturday in SM Baguio Cinema 3, after its successful showing in SM Calamba, Legazpi, and Davao.
Zig Dulay’s award-winning film became the first Filipino movie to include audio description through the Project Audio Awareness Program, which promotes Filipino films that cater to viewers with visual difficulties.
Audio description translates a film’s visual elements via a narration of its presentation frame-by-frame. Audio descriptions can be either standard, as “Firefly” uses, utilizing the natural pauses in the film’s audio, or extended, dedicating a portion of the time to the description.
In general, films with audio description in the Philippines are hard to come by since narrations are constrained by the movies’ run times. They are also limited due to the lack of technology in creating audio descriptions.
Most films with audio description come from Western mainstream cinema, such as “Avatar,” “Avengers: Infinity War,” and “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” among others. While some Asian media have audio descriptions, like “Squid Game,” “Alice in Borderland,” and “The Wandering Earth,” most of them are only accessible through private streaming platforms like Netflix.
In the country, films advocating for the inclusivity of persons with disabilities (PWD) are no stranger to the cinemas. A good number of Filipino films released recently catered to the representation of those in the community, with some having PWD side characters, such as in “Magnifico” and “Sidhi.” In contrast, others feature their struggles, like in “The Hearing” and “In His Mother's Eyes.”
In contrast to this trend, a 2016 thesis from the UP College of Mass Communication said that the industry frequently ridicules disabilities, particularly mental illnesses. It was shown that such portrayals were “generally negative, distorted, and violent.”
The country still has mixed perceptions on PWD representation. While other pieces of media document the daily struggles of the community, others exist to ridicule and perpetuate stigma around them. The most recent incident was the coercion of a PWD for a smear campaign in Pasig City.
The re-screening of “Firefly” was made possible through the collaboration of GMA Production, the Persons with Disability Affairs Office, the University of the Philippines Baguio’s Social Innovation Laboratory and Business Inclusion (UP-SILBI), and other organizations.
More cinemas across the country will soon screen the film. It is set to be released in SM Megamall on Oct. 15, during the celebration of White Cane Day.
There have already been moves to push this initiative further in the legal arena. Requiring audio description in films produced by federal agencies was ratified in the United States in 1998, as Easter Joy Sajo of UP-SILBI mentioned on the Usapang PIA radio program last March 27.
“Hopefully sa Philippines po, mai-push natin itong audio description [into] law and may implementation dito sa Pilipinas para mas maging inclusive po tayo as well,” Sajo said. ●
