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Blind

Screening on Film
Directed by Frederick Wiseman.
US, 1986, 16mm, color, 132 min.
Print source: Zipporah Films

Part of a series of documentaries Wiseman made at an Alabama school and training facility for handicapped people, Blind follows students in kindergarten through high school as they learn techniques to navigate physically and psychologically in a visual-centric world. As the camera guides the viewer through the textures of their spaces, it lingers on close-ups of fingers translating Braille and hands guiding hands, easing the viewer into discovering the intimacy of this culture within a culture (the deep South) within an institution in the 1980s. The students' persistent determination to find their way—mixed with varying degrees of anguish, humor and sweetness—yields a film as much about blindness as it is about the darkness faced in childhood and adolescence. – BG

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