Accessible filmmaking in practice

: critical and ethnographic perspectives on inclusionism, errancy and excess

Abstract

In recent years, society has become increasingly aware of questions of access, especially in relation to audiovisual media. Out of this consciousness has emerged accessible filmmaking—a methodology that advocates the proactive consideration of non-normatively embodied audiences and the integration of accessibility processes into filmmaking practices. Bringing together critical and ethnographic perspectives, this thesis puts accessible filmmaking to the test, theoretically, methodologically and practically. It draws on scholarship in accessibility, disability, film, and (audiovisual) translation, as well as post-structuralism and critical theory, to examine collaborative and integrated approaches to accessible cinema and the ways that they generate and reflect relations of power in the production, distribution and exhibition of cinema. I begin with a critical analysis of accessible filmmaking, interrogating its privileging of ‘original’ films and audiences, its author-as-origin model of filmmaking, and its conceptualisation of accessibility as a process of transfer. Ethnographic fieldwork conducted during the making of a British feature film and its attempt to practice accessible filmmaking highlights the significance of material and social conditions in the production of accessible cinema. I argue that individualistic conceptualisations of filmmaking overlook the complex network of ‘actors’ that shape commercial accessibility practices and mask the extent to which disabling practices pervade all stages of cinema, from development through to exhibition. Furthermore, I suggest that (neo)liberal approaches to access that fail to centre deafness and disability end up producing superficial forms of inclusion (i.e., inclusionism) and reproducing the social hierarchies that accessible filmmaking seeks to challenge. Finally, I consider how Captioned: Twentieth Century’s (Sylvestre 2018) non-normative captioning highlights the capacity of accessibility that errs from and exceeds industrial conventions to simultaneously reveal the ideological assumptions that underpin mainstream accessible cinema and to allow us to re-imagine the relationship between film and access in non-hierarchical ways.

Date of Award	28 May 2024
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Roehampton
Sponsors	TECHNE
Supervisor	Dionysios Kapsaskis (Director of Studies) & William Brown (Co-Supervisor)