Directed by Tran T. Kim-Trang • 2000 • United States
ALEXIA is an experimental video about word-blindness and metaphor. Word-blindness is a condition that usually afflicts people who have suffered a stroke, causing them to lose the visual recognition of individual letters but perceive the entire word, or vice versa. Metaphor is here discussed in its function to reveal and obscure perception. Divided into five short sections, ALEXIA opens with a quote from a well-known Buddhist passage (“Do not mistake the finger for the moon”) and goes on to present Giambattista Vico’s theory of the origin of language and Ludwig Wittgenstein’s theory of aspect-blindness.
Up Next in Documentaries
-
No Home Movie
Directed by Chantal Akerman • 2015 • France, Belgium
Starring Natalia Akerman, Chantal Akerman, Sylvaine AkermanThe final film from groundbreaking auteur Chantal Akerman is a deeply personal, heart-woundingly intimate portrait of her relationship with her mother, Natalia, a Holocaust survivor a...
-
ekleipsis
Directed by Tran T. Kim-Trang • 1998 • United States
In 1992, Tran T. Kim-Trang came across a New York Times article about a group of hysterically blind Cambodian women in Long Beach, California, known as the largest group of such people in the world. Hysterical blindness is sight loss brought a...
-
kore
Directed by Tran T. Kim-Trang • 1994 • United States
By focusing on the blindfold, KORE explores the eye as purveyor of desire, sexual fear, and the fantasy of blindness. An alternative sexuality is founded in touch-based (feminine?) pleasure as opposed to a vision-based (masculine?) pleasure. A...
