With Cinescapade, FIFEM (Festival Int’l du Film pour Enfants de Montréal) found a way to reach out to an underserved audience. The project responds to an open call by Québec’s cultural agency SODEC, which challenged organisations to find new ways of developing audiences. For FIFEM, this was a sign to make cinema truly accessible to children who are visually impaired, hearing impaired, or on the autism spectrum.
FIFEM director Jo-Anne Blouin: “We asked ourselves: what can we do, given our own capacity, to reach these audiences? Cinescapade addresses children we had never reached before. For us, this was a new territory that required profound research. So we did!”
The project received funding from the Québec government, with sponsorship from the Saputo Foundation. Known for supporting large-scale initiatives in sports and culture, Saputo made an exceptional financial commitment, with the condition that Cinescapade would operate in at least three regions of the province. Rather than gathering children in theaters, the programme brings films to specialized schools and centers across Québec. Jo-Anne Blouin: “Films are streamed through Vimeo links, freely available only to institutions, schools, and medical centers. That’s where we are standing now. Perhaps we can expand our operations over the years to specialised venues or individual recipients or families.”
This adaptation involves a mix of tools: subtitled versions for the hearing impaired, audio description for visually impaired audiences, and educator guidance for selecting appropriate content for children on the autism spectrum. Each film is accompanied by activity booklets designed for teachers and parents.
Launched with a website, a tagline (“Le Cinéma Pour Tous” – Cinema for everybody) and a logo, Cinescapade started with 10 films and plans to add new titles each month. The catalogue focuses primarily on Québec feature films, but FIFEM expects to expand its scope to international works as the platform grows.
Jo-Anne Blouin: “Every film distributed in Québec needs subtitles for the hearing impaired, but those are usually made for a specific format. And audio description is a whole different ballgame, more complex and costly. We had to negotiate with distributors, and thankfully, most agreed, since for now it doesn’t cost them anything. Still, reaching fair financial agreements is a challenge.”
The initiative builds on FIFEM’s earlier experiments with accessibility, such as introducing audiences to the “Greta” app, which synchronises films with subtitles or audio descriptions on personal devices. But with Cinescapade, the festival has moved from experimentation to a full-scale programme that reaches across Québec.