Two years ago, the 47th edition of the International Film Festival of
India (IFFI) set a benchmark by becoming the first Indian film
festival to screen audio descriptive movies. Since 2016, every year, the
programming package has included a special curated section for people with
disabilities. This year’s selection is two Hindi favourites – the iconic
Sholay and the more recent Hichki, for visually
impaired children.
All welcome steps, but it’s time the festival does more to promote
inclusion, say disability rights activists like Monika
Kshatriya, who is based in Goa.
IFFI has been on since 1952 and in Goa since 2004. It’s a shame that after
so many years, all they have to show in the name of inclusion is two films.
It’s a token gesture. Although there has been jubilation across the
disability sector for this, I do not fault them. We get so little by way of
entertainment, that even these two seem good enough. But the two films
being made accessible to people with visual impairment is exactly the
problem. It’s about segregation, a piecemeal approach. – Monika
Kshatriya, Disability rights activist
The problem, she says starts with the website itself which is inaccessible.
“Take look at the venues, they are completely non-accessible. In fact it’s
embarrassing to see that ESG Theatres, which claims to be barrier-free, has
just a rickety old wooden ramp at the entrance. There are no specially marked
seats in the auditorium and barely one parking for the disabled at each
venue.”
There have been some issues in making infrastructural changes to all the
theatres given that some of them are heritage structures, but
the general lack of accessibility has dampened the mood somewhat.
“One felt very happy that the disability sector has been included in the
film festival,” says Satya Prakash, a filmmaker with many
disability-themed films to his credit. “But the accessibility issue has
affected the spirit of disabled people who wanted to attend the festival. The
organisers should not just include films on disabilities, but ensure that all
the venues are accessible to people. This has been an issue in earlier film
festivals as well.”
This is the primary reason that filmmaker Rustom Irani avoid
film festivals in India. Irani, who is a wheelchair user, has been
campaigning to make theatres accessible from as far back as 2005, way before
the term became a byword in the country.
“There are no volunteers to assist you and you have to fight for space at
the venues. I simply do not find it productive to go and wait in line for
hours and get pushed around. It should be mandatory for all multiplexes to be
accessible. If malls can do it, why not multiplexes?”, he asks.
Irani brings up a larger irony as well. “Here we have festivals screening
films that celebrate the human spirit triumphing over odds like disability
while outside there are many people battling to enter the venue. This is the
problem when you start going into the territory of designated spaces.. That
in itself is discriminatory and underlines the difference between inclusivity
and accessibility.”
Clearly, being a world class festival calls for more than merely screening a
few accessible films.
ALSO READ: Iconic film Sholay to be screened with audio description at IFFI
2018
Source: https://newzhook.com/story/20613
