FILM SERIES FOR HEARING IMPAIRED SET

For many of the 150,000 hearing-impaired persons in Orange County, an activity as simple as going to a movie can be an emotionally trying experience.

“There’s still a stigma in being classified as deaf or hearing impaired,” said Carolyn Griebe, public relations coordinator for the Providence Speech and Hearing Center in Orange. “So rather than use a hearing aid, a lot of people will sit in a regular movie theater and not know what’s going on.”

For that reason the center at 1301 Providence Ave., which is marking its 20th anniversary in May, has launched a monthly film series for the hearing impaired, featuring family-oriented movies with subtitles as well as the original sound track.

Today, “Fiddler on the Roof” will be shown at 7 p.m. In coming months, other captioned movies to be shown at the center include: a James Bond film, “Diamonds Are Forever,” May 15; the biographical film about country-music singer Loretta Lynn, “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” June 19; four Walt Disney films, “101 Dalmatians” on July 17, “Mary Poppins” on Aug. 21, “The Jungle Book,” on Sept. 18, “Escape to Witch Mountain” on Oct. 16; the Peter Sellers comedy, “The Pink Panther Strikes Again,” Nov. 20.

There is no admission charge, and free refreshments are provided by volunteers from the Delta Zeta sorority, a national organization that specializes in projects for the hearing impaired. The Orange County Delta Zeta chapter also donates the film projector for the showings, Griebe said.

The movies are offered as both a public service and an opportunity for social interaction for the county’s hearing-impaired population, said Griebe, who organized the series.

“The deaf community is very difficult to reach,” she said. “So many have experienced social failures, it’s difficult for them to go out of the house and risk failure again. We are trying to make this series as comfortable as possible so that families and young children can have more success with socializing and they won’t return into isolation.”

That tendency toward isolation was manifested in the low turnout for the first film in the series in March. “We had two people show up. One was profoundly deaf; the other young man’s hearing was only moderately impaired,” Griebe said.

Despite her disappointment, she added, “even if it reaches only two people, we will continue to do it.”

Ironically, the increasing number of television programs that are close captioned for the hearing impaired aggravates the problem of social isolation, Griebe said.

“Close-captioned shows on TV are the reason there aren’t other opportunities for captioned movies. It’s more comfortable for people to stay home and watch TV,” Griebe said.

She said the only other place in Orange County she is aware of that shows captioned films for hearing-impaired persons is Rancho Santiago College in Santa Ana. “But those (films) are geared toward college-age people. Ours are geared to families.”

Nationwide, however, demand for captioned films for the hearing impaired is increasing, said Lisa Fassano, spokeswoman for Modern Talking Pictures, the Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., company that distributes captioned films to the Providence Center and other institutions in all 50 states. Modern Talking Pictures operates the Captioned Films for the Deaf program under contract with the federal Department of Education.

“It’s definitely growing,” Fassano said. “We are getting new applications constantly” from groups interested in showing captioned films. Groups pay only return postage for the films they request.

There are two categories of captioned films--educational and entertainment--with about 2,000 titles in each classification. Entertainment films range from G- to R-rated movies. No X-rated films are offered, Fassano said.

In addition to the Providence Center’s film showings on the third Thursday of each month, Griebe said each movie will be screened the previous Tuesday for hearing-impaired children while their parents meet in a new support group, “Parents Educating Parents.”