It has been a long time since some culture project caused such attention and a general approval as has the start of the film cycle adapted in such a way so that the blind and the sand-blind can follow them. The unusual version of the Oscar awarded “Dead poets society” from Peter Weir, was talked about as something important and new, even though the movie has been showed numerous times in theatres and on various television stations.
Because, the people who have already seen Weir’s cult movie now experienced it in a different way, a deeper and detailed one, with more need to analyze and, according to the after show comments, for them it was an extraordinary experience.
Almost identical to the “revelation” that the people with a damaged eyesight felt, who otherwise have little opportunities to educate themselves through movies. Until now they were restricted to watching only domestic movies or foreign ones but with the help of someone to read them the subtitles, with a occasional possibility of going to a specialized movie theater or festivals of adapted movies, but now they have the opportunity to enjoy the masterpieces of cinematography from their own living room.
The mini-revolution in the film program of the National network wasn’t brought on by the pure fact that the focus has been shifted from a regular to a special-needs audience, but by the way of the movie adaptation, which is quite unique for these territories. Except from the dialogues being synchronized, to which the domestic auditorium isn’t accustomed (like, for example, the German, Italian, Polish, Greek…), the blanks in between the series of replicas were filled by concise descriptions of scenes and atmosphere (“And professor Keating left the room without a word”).
They didn’t go into excess details, but they stuck to the essence, which kept the people who had already seen the movie to take a glance. On the other hand, this new step in the program opened some new horizons to the people with damaged sight, for which the project was intended.
The responsible person for all this is Branko Matic, a philosopher, the president of the Association of the blind “Homer”, the initiator of many projects in film and for the population to which he himself belongs to.
The role of the narrator: This passionate movie-loversays that hecame to the idea to get into the business of adaptation of movies for the blind some seven years ago.
„I started to think intensively about how it would be possible to replace the quality which is missing if they are only following the movie by just interpreting the dialogue”, Matic, who is personally still able to vividly remember the pictures, because he is not blind since birth, and by that is capable to imagine the background of any “celluloid” conversation.
He soon realized that the background of the situation needs to be covered by narration in order to create a complete picture. Matić then gathered a small team of enthusiasts who saw the certain film a couple of times, then analyzed it in detail, and finally Matic knowingly wrote the final text with the most important remarks.
„I had reduce a couple of tens of hours of material to some 35 minutes of the final version”, Matic the extensiveness of the procedure.
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