Film festival turns focus on the blind

Anna Seaman

• Last Updated: October 13. 2008 12:40AM UAE / October 12. 2008 8:40PM GMT

ABU DHABI // A series of short documentaries shot and directed by blind women was the highlight of the third day of the Middle East International Film Festival.

Seven Blind Female Filmmakers was the culmination of an extraordinary project by the Iranian director Mohammad Shirvani, who wanted to show that vision was not limited to those who could see while also proving something to himself.

“I decided to answer an old question in my mind,” he said. “What should I do if I, as a film director, would become sightless? I was wondering if I could keep film-making.”

In the spring of 2004, 12 people were chosen from among 150 volunteers, with varying degrees of blindness, to learn the basics of screenwriting and documentary film-making. During a three-month course, under Shirvani’s supervision and with the help of sighted people, the students were taught how to portray their surroundings with small digital cameras. Seven of them went on to make their own films.

The result – from directors Sara Pato, Shokoofe Davarnejad, Narges Haghighat, Banafeshe Ahmadi, Mahdis Elahi, Naghmeh Afiat, Neda Haghighat – have been compiled into one documentary. The Farsi film, with English subtitles, runs for 116 minutes.

The result, said Shirvani, answered his question and gave him new perspective.

“I taught them how to narrate their own stories through the language of cinema,” he said, “and they also taught me how to see the world with my third eye on my forehead.”

Six of the directors were due to attend the festival and appear on a panel discussion after yesterday’s screening, but were forced to pull out due to reported visa problems.

Seven Blind Female Filmmakers is in the running for a competition award in the documentary category, among 30 films being judged over the course of the nine-day festival. The winners will receive a share of US$1 million (Dh3.67m) in prize money.

Opening yesterday’s schedule was Blind Loves, a documentary chronicling the lives of four blind people. It is the culmination of five years work by the Slovakian director Juraj Lehotsky.

Lehotsky was inspired to make the film after meeting a blind woman who said her favourite colour was orange.

“I was amazed by her perception of the colour,” he said. “She said the fruit was tasty and sweet and because of that she had a good idea of the colour. It was the beginning of my dream to make a film about the lives of blind people.”

The 77-minute production focuses on four people united by their need for love. Lehotsky said he wanted to find characters to span every stage of life from birth to old age.

“I chose a teenager, an old man and a pregnant woman with her husband, as I wanted to reflect as many situations as possible,” he said.

“The theme was the essence of love. I liked the idea of a story of a blind girl who falls in love with a man she has never seen, she only feels him and sees him. The final question being whether love was visible or invisible.”

Lehotsky used a technique called collecting-in-time, which involved filming on 36 days over five years. He said the original idea was to make a fictional piece, but he drew more inspiration from real life.

“Real people give me more original material,” he said. “By allowing them to be natural in front of the camera I came across sweet or amusing situations. For example once I found Peter [a blind music teacher] sitting in front of the TV watching ski jumping. He was counting the seconds between taking off and landing and estimating the distances. I find those absurdities were what formed the final version of the film.

“Also it was very interesting working with these people because they didn’t suffer nervousness or exaggerated self-control in front of the cameras. They didn’t have to worry about what they looked like.”

Screened at this year’s Cannes International Film Festival, Blind Loves won the International Federation of Film Critics award at Motovun, Croatia.

Yesterday also saw the screening of Hasiba, a movie based on the novels of Khairi al Zahabi from Syria. The film depicts events between 1927 and 1959 through the lives of female characters from Damascus.

Today’s highlights include the Palestinian movie Laila’s Birthday, a wry comedy by Rashid Masharawi, which follows the tale of a father and daughter during one day in contemporary Palestine, and Terra Nova, a Russian film about a convicted killer who chooses to be deported to a remote corner of the Arctic region rather than spend his life in prison.

The evening features the lone screening of Woody Allen’s film Vicky Cristina Barcelona, starring Penelope Cruz, Javier Bardem and Scarlett Johansson, who become entangled in a love triangle in the Spanish city.

aseaman@thenational.ae