Forest Hills Theater Fails To Comply With NYC Open Captions Law

FOREST HILLS, QUEENS — More than a year after the city's Open Captions Law went into effect, an iconic theatre in Forest Hills is still playing catchup.

Cinemart, located at 106-03 Metropolitan Ave., is failing to comply with a law that requires theatres to provide open captions in some of its movie showings as a service for moviegoers who are Deaf and hard of hearing.

Owner Nicolas Nicolau told Patch that he's planning to install showtimes with open captions "within the next five to six weeks."

He said many people able of hearing in the community dislike open captions, and he has been testing how many people need the service before installing the system.

"We're too small to have dedicated open caption shows until we build an audience," Nicolau said.

Cinemart offers open captions services for some movies, but a more permanent service is "going to take a long time to build."

Early-bird movie times will most likely offer open captions, and members of the Deaf and hard-of-hearing community can request open caption devices upon request for the rest of the showtimes.

"He gets sympathy for trying to show movies that won't be seen by audiences that have no interest in the big chains," Jerry Bergman, 77-year-old deaf/hard-of-hearing activist, told Patch. "But ignorance of the law is no excuse."

On Monday, Bergman made a formal 311 complaint.

Current regulations from the Americans with Disability Act favor require theatres to offer closed-captioning for individual patrons at cinemas who request seat-specific devices. The city law requires entire showtimes to be open-caption technology.