TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Going to a theater to enjoy movies is no longer considered an outlandish activity for the blind community after the introduction of a ‘blind cinema’, where blind people are accompanied by experienced volunteer guides that help describe a visual reference to the blind by whispering the situation to them.
Initiator of movie theater for the blind called ‘sinema berbisik’ or whisper cinema Cici Suciati explained that the cinema works by having one guide be in charge of verbally describing a movie sequence to two blind people that are sitting side-by-side the guide.
Cici explained that there are several techniques that guide’s often exercise to their clients and most importantly, “The guides [whispers] a scene that have no dialogues,” said Cici on Friday, July 21.
She explained that guides must not speak whenever a scene has dialogues to avoid breaking the concentration of the blind people that are listening to the movie.
There are ways for a whisperer to explain and describe a scene. Such as explaining it thoroughly but not overly detailed, which also applies to adult scenes, where guides must be honest in their description to their clients.
“However, it is up to the whisperer. They are allowed to tone down the language they use to describe the scene,” said Cici.
According to Yunan Patra Juangga (25), a guide or whisperer must be informed on what their clients want to know regarding the movie. “Before I start whispering, I would ask the blind person what they would like to know about the movie,” said Yunan.
Yunan said that blind people mostly want to be informed of an actor’s costume, wants to dive deeper into a scene’s environment, the actor’s physical appearance and the activities that being conducted.
Manager of a ‘whisper theater’ Paviliun 28, Tania Samantha advised that the whispering activities should be conducted as natural as possible and should be able to be a reference for a blind person to construct in his or her mind.
CHETA NILAWATY P.
