People supporting MID_ACT2010
The Movie in the Dark @ Campus Theatre (MID_ACT) 2010 titled "There is happiness you can see when you close your eyes" attracted more than 100 moviegoers on November 13. "Shiawase Kazoku Keikaku", a movie produced by Shochiku that features voice guidance, was also screened. Afterward, Tsutomu Abe, the director of the film, Prof. Takashi Uchiyama from the School of Cultural & Creative Studies of Aoyama Gakuin University, Toshiyuki Kajiwara, manager of Cinema Jack and Betty (a theatre), and Keiko Saito, chairperson of City Light Film Festival planning committee participated in a panel discussion on voice guidance.
Voice guidance helps visually disabled people to enjoy movies by explaining what is occurring on the screen. Volunteers from Universal Design Laboratory headed by Prof. Hidekazu Nishimura organized the event's planning committee, and created voice guidance for the film for the first time under the instruction of director Abe. The audience enjoyed the narration by SDM student Tomoaki Sakurai, who developed a fine narrative voice in his former work as a radio deejay. The planning committee also proposed the "one yen Moviement" idea to produce voice guidance for 100 films a year by collecting one yen from the price of every movie ticket sold in Japan. Panelists supported the idea of promoting voice guidance through a movement called "Movie, Moviement".
Director Tsutomu Abe (second from left) with planning
committee members monitoring the voice guidance
(From right) Director Tsutomu Abe,
Prof. Takashi Uchiyama, Mr. Toshiyuki Kajiwara
and Ms. Keiko Saito in panel discussion