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The Land of Silence and Darkness
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The Land of Silence and Darkness
IDFA 2001

The Land of Silence and Darkness

Land des Schweigens und der Dunkelheit
Werner Herzog
Germany
1971
85 min
n.a.
Festival history
Werner Herzog made an impressive portrait of the then 56-year-old Fini Straubinger, a deaf-and-blind woman from the German federal state of Bavaria, who helps people sharing her handicaps to avoid becoming socially isolated. As in his later feature film JEDER FÜR SICH UND GOTT GEGEN ALLE (1974), based on the mysterious story of Kaspar Hauser, Herzog tries to show, without passing a moral judgement, that people with a handicap or ‘defect’ are not pitiful or ‘inferior’; on the contrary, something in their way of life poses the question to us, ‘normal’ people, of who we are and why we do what we do.
Credits
Screening copy
    New Yorker Films
    New Yorker Films