Coming to theatres today, Friday, August 9:
VISION PORTRAITS
Director:
Rodney Evans
World Premiere:
SXSW 2019
Select Festivals:
BAMcinemaFest, Sydney, Melbourne, BlackStar, American Black, Outfest, Frameline, Inside Out, LGBT fests in Vancouver, Seattle, Boston, and London
About:
A personal film exploring the lives and work of visually-impaired artists.
Director Rodney Evans, known for his Sundance award-winning fiction feature debut BROTHER TO BROTHER, is losing his eyesight due to retinitis pigmentosa. Given his visually-focused profession, he understandably has fears and concerns about his future as his field of vision continues to narrow. Tackling these anxieties – and the stigma of going blind – head on, Evans shares his experiences while also threading them together with those of three other creatives with visual impairment: photographer John Dugdale, writer Ryan Knighton, and dancer Kayla Hamilton. The result is both instructive for the director and for the audience. On a practical level, the film candidly addresses how Evans and the others experience disability and how they navigate a world that takes sight as a given, moving from attempting to pass as sighted to acknowledging how they have internalized societal stigmas. At the same time, Evans explores each artist’s creative process, how they have adapted to account for their vision impairment, and the revelations they have made about blindness as a different mode of perception that impacts their art.
