Blindsight (2006)

Set against the breathtaking backdrop of the Himalayas, Blindsight follows the gripping adventure of six Tibetan teenagers who set out to climb the 23,000 foot Lhakpa Ri on the north side of Mount Everest. A dangerous journey soon becomes a seemingly impossible challenge made all the more remarkable by the fact that the teenagers are blind.

Believed by many Tibetans to be possessed by demons, the children are shunned by their parents, scorned by their villages and rejected by society. Rescued by Sabriye Tenberken – a blind educator and adventurer who established the first school for the blind in Lhasa, the students invite the famous blind mountain climber Erik Weihenmayer to visit their school after learning about his conquest of Everest. Erik arrives in Lhasa and inspires Sabriye and her students Kyila, Sonam Bhumtso, Tashi, Gyenshen, Dachung and Tenzin to let him lead them higher than they have ever been before. The resulting 3-week journey is beyond anything any of them could have predicted.

Blindsight premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and was shortlisted for an Academy Award. 

Watch the trailer here:

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT

I hope that this film will be important and enjoyable for blind audiences. I hope that as many blind people as possible will be able to experience the film, and I am delighted that we have a state-of-the-art audio description track for blind audiences, and I hope that this may also encourage more cinemas to install the system.

I feel very privileged to have been able to have spent three months traveling in Tibet, and to have had this chance to get to know some of this unique place and its inspiring inhabitants and beautiful culture, and I am honoured to share that with audiences. In particular, the visits to the six students’ homes and villages are pretty unique, as far as I know, in terms of the access we gained to ordinary Tibetan homes and villages – and attitudes. My goal is that people come out of the movie theatre and stay up talking all night about the rights and wrongs, and the pros and cons, and the East and West, and the blind and sighted, and the Tibet and China, and the Sabriye and Erik, and the falling on your face versus falling on your ass of it all…

FESTIVALS & AWARDS

* Winner, Audience Award Panorama Publikumspreis for Best Film, Berlin International Film Festival 2007
* Winner, Audience Award for Best Film, American Film Institute AFI Film Festival 2006
* Winner, Audience Award for Best Documentary, Palm Springs International Film Festival 2007
* Winner, Audience Award for Best Film, Ghent Film Festival 2007
* Winner, Best Documentary, British Independent Film Awards 2006
* Official Selection, London Film Festival 2006
* Official Selection, Toronto Film Festival 2006
* Official Selection, SXSW Film Festival 2007
* Nominated, Best Documentary, British Independent Film Awards 2006

THE MAKING OF BLINDSIGHT

The idea for the expedition came about after blind educator Sabriye Tenberken, who founded the school Braille Without Borders for the blind in Lhasa, wrote the following email letter to the world renowned blind mountaineer Erik Weihenmayer, upon hearing the news that he had summitted Mt. Everest in 2001. Sabriye had read Erik’s book TOUCH THE TOP OF THE WORLD to the students in the school, and was inspired to get in touch following the incredible news of his summit.

The following is the letter that sparked the whole expedition and then film.

EMAILED FROM LHASA, TIBET, 2001:

Dear Erik,

After you reached the top of the world our Tibetan neighbour rushed into our centre and told the kids about your success. Some of them didn’t believe it at first but then there was a mutual understanding; if you could climb to the top of the world, we also can overcome our borders and show to the world that the blind can equally participate in society and are able to accomplish great things.

Since my boyfriend Paul and I had read your book with great pleasure, I decided to tell the children about your life. Just one week ago I told the children in our centre all about your childhood, how you became blind, how you dropped your canes from bridges, how you finally met other blind people and then how you became confident in wrestling. All of them were very impressed by all these experiences you had and they compared your experiences with their own ones. Again they realized that it does not matter much if you are a blind child in Germany, USA or Tibet, the experience one has who becomes blind, the embarrassment at first, the confidence which builds up slowly but steadily, the reaction of the sighted is probably for every blind person the same.

After I had told your story to the children, the boys were walking together with some of our sighted colleagues through the inner part of Lhasa. Lhasa is not the blindfriendliest city in the world. There are lots of holes in the street, which sometimes are a few meters deep. Construction sites are never protected through wires. It can happen that you step in huge puddles of dirty water or even excrements. Most of our children know their way through this chaos. I teach them mobility and they are quite confident in using their canes. They always think that if I could find my way around they also have to try. The only problem is that they are sometimes very embarrassed to show their canes since nomads and pilgrims who never saw a cane before often make fun about them. They call them “blind fools”, imitate them and laugh about them. One of the boys however once turned around and said: “you can not talk to me like that, I am blind but I am not a fool! And did you ever go to school, do you know how to read and write? Can you find the toilet in the middle of the night without a torch?”

Not all of these children have this pride and confidence to react in such a strong way. I often tell them, that they should understand that these people are just stupid. And if they can, they should say something back. Most of them now like the idea to defend themselves in a verbal way. First, they try to reply in a rather friendly way and if this does not help, they are starting to shout back, make fun of them and soon they have the crowd on their side.

And still, if a sighted friend is around, they try to hide away their canes to walk invisible and convenient on the arm of the sighted.

And at this day when I ended your story by saying, ‘this man, who is blind like you climbed the top of the world, not by holding the arm of a sighted friend, but with the help of some strings and two canes,’ they all proudly decided to walk on their own without the convenience of walking with the sighted. Stories like yours changed their lives. Most of them now understand that there is nothing to be embarrassed about. They can be very proud little people, and they say quite often: “we are blind, so what? We can speak English and Chinese, we can find our way in the labyrinth of Lhasa’s walkways, we are able to read and write in three different Braille scripts and we read and write without using light.”

Last week I told them already that I wanted to write to you to ask if you would like to come to Tibet, maybe even to do a small climbing workshop with our kids. Two years ago, some of our students started with rock climbing, taught by Tibetan
Everest guides from the Tibetan mountain climbing institute. After you have reached the Everest I talked to this climbing teacher about the idea of inviting you to Lhasa. He became very interested and since then we were searching for your e-mail address.

In a way, we are something like colleagues, maybe in encouraging the blind to stand up, to find and to overcome their own borders.

As I read from your book we have the same philosophy, similar history and a similar way of approaching ideas.

We all would be very excited if you could visit our project. Paul and I also want to come to the States in the beginning of the next year and maybe we have the chance to meet you somewhere there first.

Right now I am sitting in our computer room. Next to me is Gyenshen, a brilliant young student who became blind with the age of 9. He together with two other girls get computer lessons and he also is writing a letter to you.

Gyenshen comes from a very remote and poor farmer area. After he became blind his family kept him away in a dark room for three years. The family was embarrassed having a blind child. In Tibet, people believe that blindness is a punishment for something which the person has done bad or wrong, in his/her previous life. People also believe that blind people are possessed by demons.

When he came to our project he was very shy. Now he is one of the best students and is quite confident with handling the computer. He is probably the only one of his village who knows that the world is round, and that one can communicate through just a wire. He is able to tell the other children of the village that “iron yaks” are Toyota Landcruisers which drink gasoline instead of water.

The blind that grow up in Tibet have certainly a totally different life than we in Germany or you in the US. But they feel a close solidarity with blind people from other countries. This connection and solidarity gives them a lot of strength and power to manage their lives.

Today is the international day of the white cane and you help us to fill this day with pride.

Greetings from a sunny and cold Lhasa, greetings from all the children, the staff and especially from Paul.

Say hello to your family.

With lots of good wishes, yours truly,

Sabriye Tenberken

ON BLINDNESS

“Blind people in Tibet are really lacking in resources, support, understanding, medical care, and expectations, and even at the blind school it was hard to believe that Erik could have done something so immensely challenging” says Lucy Walker, director. “Sabriye herself knew that blind people can do anything they put their minds to, and Erik provided the perfect example for her to instil this in her students - once she had convinced them that it was true. Then they were so overjoyed that Sabriye wrote to Erik to tell him about it. When Erik received the letter he said he "felt like a coward" in comparison to what Sabriye had achieved, and resolved to visit - and then the idea for a climbing expedition was born, as we see in the film”.

ON INTERPRETING BLINDNESS CINEMATICALLY

“I was always anxious not to use the cliché of a soft-focus lens to depict the vision of the blind people in the film who have some vision - because that is not what their vision looks like,” says director Lucy Walker. “They have all kinds of variations on image distortion, with dancing eyes, or being able to sense light only, all very specific, and I felt we should either go for it or not, but I didn’t want to use an inaccurate analogy like out-of-focus”.

ON THE PRODUCTION SCHEDULE AND LOCATIONS

The production was divided into 2 shoots; the spring training in May 2004 involved a climb up a vertical rock face and a trek over a 16,000-foot pass beginning at Tsurpu Monastery. The second shoot from September to November 2004 involved traveling across the Tibetan plateau to all of the 6 kids’ villages, including a trip 1000 km away to southern China, by plane, and an additional 3 days by van to find Tashi’s family in Szechuan Province. The expedition up the 23,000-foot Lhakpa Ri was also shot in the fall.

ON THE CHALLENGES OF SHOOTING IN TIBET

Producer Robson-Orr notes, “Shooting in Tibet presents a myriad of challenges. The most significant being that the Chinese authorities are extremely particular about what you shoot. If it is not listed on your shot list, approved in Beijing prior to your arrival, they won’t let you shoot it. You are assigned minders to make sure you don’t. At the same time, if you are shooting what you said you intended to, there is no problem. Fortunately, we only had the best of intentions and only a few hiccups.”

“When we were shooting in southern China, Szechuan police arrived and demanded we stop shooting at the very moment Tashi was being reunited with his father for the first time in 9 years. Tashi’s reunion was a major moment in our film, unfolding before our eyes, and it could never be recaptured. Fortunately, Petr Cikhart is very experienced in tense shooting conditions and was not fazed by the pressure. Ultimately, we did get shut down but not before we shot the first 10 golden minutes of the reunion. The police put us under a ‘house arrest’ of sorts back in our hotel in Luding. They seemed to be concerned we were shooting something political. Turns out the film permit we purchased from Beijing only applied to locations listed for Tibet, but not the ones in China. Fortunately, a senior official from the Tibet Autonomous Region called officials in Luding and told them everything was okay and they let us continue shooting the next day.”

ON CAMERAS AND FOOTAGE

Producer Robson-Orr says one of the most difficult hurdles of this shoot was getting approval from the Chinese government to bring into Tibet what they refer to as ‘big cameras.’ In the case of BLINDSIGHT, that meant the difference between the Panasonic AG-DVX 100, which is mini-DV, versus the Panasonic AJ-HD27 Vericam, which is high definition. There was such a short amount of time to prepare for the May training climb, given the restrictions, we were only allowed to bring in what are considered by the Chinese authorities to be ‘tourist’ cameras. “We determined the best mini-DV video camera with a ‘film’ effect available was the DVX 100. We shot in progressive’ mode with great success. When we returned in the fall, we were equipped with permits for 2 Panasonic high definition cameras, both HD27 Vericam’s and the footage was spectacular, very filmy, really beautiful. We experimented with ‘video’ and ‘film’ mode on those cameras discovering ‘film’ mode was far superior for not blowing out in tricky light situations and creating beautiful blacks. After checking the color on the 35mm film out, the timer at St. Anne’s Post in London insisted that a UK Panasonic representative come by to look at BLINDSIGHT that quite seamlessly cuts between DVX100 and the HD27. He thought the film was a better example of the performance of those two cameras side by side than their own Panasonic show reel.

In total, the filmmakers shot about 250 hours worth of footage and obtained another 20 hours worth of archival footage. In short, they condensed around 270 hours worth of footage into 104 minutes.

ON SHOOTING AT ALTITUDE

The biggest challenge at altitude is making sure the crew gets enough rest, proper food and most importantly, doesn’t get sick. In order to shoot the climbing team passing by, the crew had to run ahead of the climbers, set up, let them pass and then run up in front of them again, all the time carrying over 40 pounds of gear and all at altitudes ranging between 15,000 and 22,000 feet. Concentration is hugely important and is one of the first things to slip when at altitude. Nightly production meetings were held to insure the team was getting the coverage necessary, recognizing there would never be a way to shoot everything, but always checking to make sure what they did have was quality.

ON FILM CREW HEALTH ISSUES

The film crew did suffer various bouts of illness in the course of the shoot including food poisoning, altitude sickness, flu, amoebic dysentery and giardia. Sybil RobsonOrr recalls that the director of photography Petr Cikhart was shooting an interview with Kyila “when he politely excused himself from the building, went outside, threw up, came back to his camera and resumed shooting and never mentioned he had been
sick.”

ON THE IMPACT THE FILMMAKERS HOPE THE FILM WILL HAVE

Lucy Walker, Director:
“ I hope that this film will be important and enjoyable for blind audiences. I hope thatas many blind people as possible will be able to experience the film, and I am delighted that we have a state-of-the-art audio description track for blind audiences and I hope that this may also encourage more cinemas to install the system.

I feel very privileged to have been able to have spent three months traveling in Tibet, and to have had this chance to get to know some of this unique place and its inspiring inhabitants and beautiful culture, and I am honoured to share that with audiences. In particular, the visits to the six students’ homes and villages are pretty unique, as far as I know, in terms of the access we gained to ordinary Tibetan homes and villages -- and attitudes. My goal is that people come out of the movie theatre and stay up talking all night about the rights and wrongs, and the pros and cons, and the East and West, and the blind and sighted, and the Tibet and China, and the Sabriye and Erik, and the falling on your face versus falling on your ass of it all…”

Sybil Robson-Orr, Producer:
“My hope is that Sabriye, Erik and the kids inspire our audience to push through their personal boundaries and reach for their dreams. Through them, we can see that anything in life, whether we are physically challenged or not, is possible if we build the right team around us. They don’t want to be seen as blind people who do great things, but rather ambassadors for everyone who believes in climbing higher.”

Steven Haft, Executive Producer:
"In a number of the films I’ve done, it really comes back to what touched me about the story from the start, this film for me asks the question, ‘what does it take for you to get off the sideline in life and engage yourself?’ I believe this is what Sabriye and Erik did, like when Sabriye started the school and Erik was so intrigued by the letter he had from the kids that he went to meet them to try and work with them. Every audience
can relate to this film, in that they can question their own lives, and ask ‘what am I doing to step off the sideline?’ “

BACKGROUND ABOUT THE TITLE “BLINDSIGHT”

The title of the film came about because it was agreed that it was vital not to shy away from the word ‘blind,’ and also that the title needed a unique and unusual feel, to truly reflect the film. Says Sybil Robson-Orr, producer “The word was initially inspired by how blind people are literally blindsided by society in Tibet. Blindsided became ‘blindsighted,’ abbreviated to BLINDSIGHT which we thought was a new word. After conducting an initial title search, we discovered that blindsight is an actual medical phenomenon involving a cortex of the brain in which blind people have a sense of perceived vision.”

‘Blindsight’ definition :
Visual processing in the brain goes through a series of processing stages. Destruction of the first visual cortical area, primary visual cortex (or V1 or striate cortex) leads to blindness in the part of the visual field that corresponds to the
damaged cortical representation. The area of blindness - known as a scotoma - is in the visual field opposite the damaged hemisphere and can vary from a small area up to the entire hemifield.

Although individuals with damage to V1 are not consciously aware of stimuli presented in their blind field, Larry Weiskrantz and colleagues showed in the early 1970s that if forced to guess about whether a stimulus is present in their blind field, some observers do better than chance. This ability to detect stimuli that the observer is not conscious of can extend to discrimination of the type of stimulus (for example, whether an 'X' or 'O' has been presented in the blind field). This general phenomenon has been dubbed “blindsight.”

It is unsurprising from a neurological viewpoint that damage to V1 leads to reports of blindness. Visual processing occurs in the brain in a hierarchical series of stages (with much crosstalk and feedback between areas). As V1 is the first cortical area in this hierarchy any damage to V1 severely limits visual information passing from retina, via the LGN and then V1, to higher cortical areas. However, the route from retina through V1 is not the only visual pathway into cortex (though it is by far the largest); it is commonly thought that the residual performance of people exhibiting blindsight is due to preserved pathways into extrastriate cortex that bypass V1. Wha is surprising is that activity in these extrastriate areas is apparently insufficient to support visual awareness in the absence of V1.