Dago Schelin

Vision and Blindness in Film

Dago Schelin

Vision and Blindness in Film

ISBN (Print) 978-3-96317-144-4

ISBN (ePDF) 978-3-96317-667-8

ISBN (ePub) 978-3-96317-677-7

Copyright © 2019 Büchner-Verlag eG, Marburg

The print edition of the publication was funded by the DAAD – Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst.

Bildnachweise Umschlag: Pixabay / Frantisek_Krejci (Blende, bearbeitet), cocoparisienne (Auge, bearbeitet)

Film stills reprinted by permission of Copacabana Filmes.

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Dago Schelin is a Brazilian-German filmmaker/musician. After receiving his B.A. in Languages (Portuguese and English), as well as a B.A. in Popular Music in Brazil, Dago Schelin was awarded DAAD scholarships for his M.A. studies in Media Production and his PhD in Media Studies. Among other publications, Dago Schelin has edited and co-authored a book on the interdisciplinarity of cinema called »Cinema Invites Other Gazes«. Currently, Dago Schelin is a researcher at Philipps-University Marburg.

Contents

1. 0 Acknowledgments
2. 0 Foreword – Aesthetic Dimensions of Blindness and Vision
3. 1 Theories of Vision
4. 1.1 Introduction
5. 1.2 The Gaze within a Brief History of Theories of Vision
6. 1.2.1. Introductory Remarks
7. 1.2.2. A Review of the Current State of Research
8. 1.2.3. A Historical Overview of Vision
9. 1.2.4. A Short History of the Gaze according to Ivan Illich
10. 1.2.5. Ancient Theories of Vision up until Kepler
11. 1.2.6. The Window of Renaissance
12. 1.2.7. Crary’s Prehistory of Contemporary Vision
13. 2 Categories of Vision
14. 2.1 Introduction
15. 2.1.1. A Dialogical Framework
16. 2.1.2. Vision and Visuality
17. 2.2 Active and Passive Vision
18. 2.2.1. From Camcorder to Erectile Pupilla
19. 2.2.2. Entering the Film’s Self
20. 2.3 Tactile Visuality
21. 2.3.1. To Touch or Not to Touch
22. 2.3.2. Between a Metaphorical and a Literal Touch
23. 2.3.3. Mimetic Visuality: Epistemological Implications
24. 2.4 Blind Vision
25. 2.4.1. Inner and Outer Vision
26. 2.4.2. Further Insights of Blind Vision
27. 2.5 A Summary of the Categories
28. 3 Film Analysis
29. 3.1 Outline
30. 3.2 Films, Blindness, and the Blind
31. 3.3 Introductory Analyses of Films in Relation to Vision and Blindness
32. 3.3.1. Le Scaphandre and the POV
33. 3.3.2. Sensation Enhancers
34. 3.3.3. Visual Prosthesis
35. 3.3.4. Documentary Film and the Reality of Seeing Reality
36. 3.4 Janela da Alma
37. 3.4.1. Introducing Janela da Alma
38. 3.4.2. A Brazilian Window
39. 3.4.3. The Opening Sequence
40. 3.4.4. Looking at the Reel
41. 3.4.5. Representing Views and Gazes
42. 3.4.6. Good Bokeh, Bad Bokeh
43. 3.4.7. Window, Sound, and Soul
44. 3.4.8. The Blind Photographer
45. 3.4.9. Seeing with Glasses
46. 4 Discussion and Conclusions
47. 4.1 Toward an Understanding of Filmmaking as a Bridge
48. 4.2 Filmmaking as a Remnant of the Pre-Keplerian Gaze
49. 4.3 A Substitute for the Invisible
50. 4.4 Trans-seeing Reality
51. 5 Final Words
52. 0 Works Cited
53. 0 Endnoten

Acknowledgments

I would like to give special thanks to:

João Jardim and Ana Carolina Esteves for kindly providing the stills of Janela da Alma (2001). Alex Stark for the patience to listen to my new paragraphs, for the feedback, and companionship. Chiara Marchini for the transcription to French of the Bavcar-sequences. Dietmar Kammerer for the first conversations, which helped me to find a better focus. Alena Strohmaier for simply being there as a fellow researcher and for the input in finding the right words for a title. Claudio Oliver for the initial ideas, conversations and insights, and final talks (all based on something much greater than just the writing of a dissertation). Tony Cristafi (September 30, 1968–May 21, 2017) whom I met here in Marburg while he was writing and teaching at the university for a year. It saddened me to hear that he passed away prematurely not long after he had returned to the US. Thank you, Tony, for the exchange of ideas in the initial phase of this project and, mostly, for the beginning of a friendship. Artur and Gabi Fuchs for opening their home so that I could lock myself up in the guestroom and turn on the writing-mode. Johannes Herrmann for the incredible job of reviewing this text. My family for the patience and total support, especially to you Cíntia, during the times I left all the hard work of managing two kids and a home to you in a (still) foreign country.

Dago Schelin

Foreword – Aesthetic Dimensions of Blindness and Vision

Dago Schelin’s reflections on blindness and vision aim at the central configurations of film, which appears as a medium which can return to pre-modern concepts of vision. Starting from a discussion of pre-Keplerian notions of visuality, Dago Schelin explores these forms in order to find an aesthetic model to research into contemporary film narratives and images. The reference to Ivan Illich, who – coincidentally? – has taught and researched in Marburg as well, provides a deeper understanding of pre-modern concepts of vision, since his idea of an active gaze bridges the historic gap between the modern, technological versions of vision and the older, bodily notions of the eye.

For Dago Schelin, film is the privileged medium to experiment with vision and in each case it is an artistic experiment which picks up science in order to explore the aesthetic dimensions of vision. In his understanding, vision comes very close to blindness, which is not conceptualized as the counterpart to vision, but as its pre-condition. Since there is blindness, we can understand vision. Against this background he investigates into the narratives and visual sketches of a variety of films. Pivotal are two films about blindness and vision, Derek Jarman’s Blue (1993) and João Jardim’s and Walter Carvalho’s Janela da Alma (2001), both of which voice the conditions of seeing. Filmmaker and painter Derek Jarman’s Blue is a compassionate and sometimes ironic investigation of his becoming blind from the HIV infection, Jardim’s and Carvalho’s documentary fathoms the conditions of seeing on the basis of blindness. This film and the way it is approached here understands blindness as a primordial way of seeing.

Besides being an academic dissertation and thus the entrance ticket into academic life, Dago Schelin’s study is foremost a highly philosophical treatise on the conditions and different aspects of seeing in general. Film figures as the privileged medium to dive into the artistic complexity and expressions of seeing, since images can be delivered and individual perceptions can be documented. In its essayistic and philosophical approach this book transcends the close boundaries of academic research into a wide philosophical treatise of historic and artistic forms of seeing.

Prof. Dr. Angela Krewani