We’ve been working with Matchbox Cineclub for our captioning needs since we first started including screenings accessible to d/Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing audiences at GSFF. Thanks to Matchbox’s work, expertise and advice, we now include SDH captions in our entire festival programme, and they have been instrumental in raising awareness about these access needs across the Scottish film exhibition scene. Thanks to their own backgrounds in festival programming and production, they understand the time pressures and challenges of festival planning and have always been incredibly accommodating and easy to work with.
Glasgow Short Film Festival
In terms of reliability, turnaround, communication and professionalism, there’s no one better than Matchbox from our perspective. After captioning all 171 films in our 2021 online festival, they are our go-to source for providing descriptive subtitles — and now audio description. From initial conversations about why access is important and what functions captions serve, to more technical details about grammar and typesetting, Matchbox communicate suggestions and decisions clearly and succinctly. Captioning experimental film and artists’ moving image can for obvious reasons be a tricky task, and we’ve received much praise from artists and filmmakers in our programme for the sensitive and attentive way their work was made more accessible for wider audiences.
Alchemy Film & Arts
Matchbox Cine have been a huge blessing to our festival, enabling us to be 100% inclusive in our online feature film and short programming. Not only did they work with whatever material we gave them, creating SDH versioning for foreign language titles or creating captions completely from scratch, they were flexible, extremely fast and very friendly. They even worked miracles with some really tight turnaround times! The end results were industry standard captions which we also subsequently supplied to a UK distributor for an official release. We can’t recommend Matchbox enough to any festival looking to be more accessible.
Abertoir Horror Film Festival
For Open City 2021 we had the goal of a fully captioned online film programme which we achieved working with Matchbox Cine. Sean and Calvin were dedicated and detailed and incredibly helpful with some last minute requests. We look forward to working together again in 2022.
Open City Documentary Festival
It has been a pleasure to collaborate with Matchbox over the past three years. From creating high-quality descriptive subtitles for films in our festival line-ups and year-round programmes, to supporting our own team’s skills development by proofing SDH made in-house, Matchbox’s work, advice and feedback have been vital in making our screenings more accessible to d/Deaf and hard-of-hearing audiences. The team approach their work with utmost care, generosity, and sensitivity, and the UK film exhibition sector is better for having them in it. [Squeals gratefully]
Take One Action Film Festival
Matchbox Cine 