Blind Kind

How do blind people perceive their surroundings? To answer this question, Johan van der Keuken spent two months at an institute for blind children. He realized that blind people don’t miss sight, because they have never known it. “It’s hard to get people to understand that,” one of the children explains. “But when they close their eyes, they don’t hear anything. So they bump into everything.” The director then filmed how these young people learn to navigate the sighted world. Hands feel their way through a puzzle or hold a pigeon. Feet search hesitantly for a path across a broken-up sidewalk.

Van der Keuken shot his 16mm footage without sound, allowing him to work flexibly. The children’s words were added later. Through his associative editing, including passages of complete blackness, Van der Keuken draws the viewer even further into the perceptual world of blind people.

In 2007, Blind Child was added to the Canon of Dutch Cinema.