CIARA’S REVIEW

Film Review: Vision Portraits

The film that I watched is called “Vision Portraits”  written and directed by Rodney Evans. The film followed four artists who have different levels of visual impairment. Each person is a different type of artist and they explain how being visually impaired impacts their craft. The first artist introduced is actually the writer and director of the film Rodney Evans, he was diagnosed with retina pigmentosa in 1996 and has been gradually losing his vision ever since. He is a filmmaker and has found a way to let his disability help him see things in a different perspective and propel him in his artistic endeavors. The second artist introduced is John a photographer who had a stroke when he was 33 and lost his vision and was paralyzed. He was in the hospital for over a year and had to learn how to walk again. When he lost his vision, he decided he would continue to take photos because he always saw what he wanted in his mind first anyways. He needed assistants to help him position the cameras along with other things, but he continued doing what he loved after he became visually impaired. The third artist we meet is Kayla, a dancer who was born with vision in only one eye. Her vision eventually became worse in her seeing eye as she got older but that didn’t stop her from following her dream of becoming a dancer. Kayla sees her disability as an asset to her dancing because she can feel and sense things better than those with full vision. Kayla struggled with depression and suicidal thoughts because of her visual impairment but she eventually turned it into something good by making her own dance show called “Nearly Sighted” where she uses her art form to try to teach people about having different perspectives. The final artist we meet is Ryan who is a writer that was diagnosed with retinal pigmentosa when he was 18 and gradually went blind after that. He has used his experiences being blind to write comedically about his life and struggles. 

This film is full of intersectionality at all points. Intersectionality can be understood as how systems of inequality interact and overlap. “There are countless individuals who experience oppression in society because of the cumulative and intersecting effects of racism, sexism, class oppression, transphobia, able-ism and more”. (Kaufman, Intersectionality for beginners). Most of the artists can not only be put into the category of inequality through disability but also through race, sexual orientation, and gender. Rodney is a man who is black and visually impaired, he may be discriminated against because of both of those things not only because of one. John is a man who is gay, HIV positive, and blind he could be discriminated against or experience inequality due to any of those things. Kayla is a woman who is black, visually impaired, and struggled with mental illness and could experience many dimensions of discrimination. The intersectionality in this film is very apparent because most of the artists don’t only fall into one category, they all experience multiple struggles in their lives. This is a very positive thing because the film represents many different groups of people and talks about how they are impacted. 

The film mostly focuses on how the artists are impacted by being visually impaired or blind. The reading from class “Escaping the ‘Evil Avenger’ and the ‘Supercrip’: Images of disability in popular television” by Alison Harnett, talked a lot about under-representation of the disabled community in television. It argued that “when it is portrayed on screen, the images are often inaccurate or unfair” (21). In my opinion this film was very accurate in the way it portrayed the life of a disabled person specifically someone with visual impairment. The film didn’t focus a lot on why life is hard for people with disabilities, but it focused a lot on why life is still beautiful even when you cannot see it. The film focused on how these artists used their different perspectives of being visually impaired to make their art better and to see beauty in a different way, which I found very inspiring. Even though they didn’t focus a lot on why being blind makes life hard they did touch on it and I thought it was a very realistic view and depiction of hardships people with disabilities endure. For example, one thing they touch on is how it’s hard to use public transportation and how it can sometimes be uncomfortable for blind people. They also talked about having relationships with people when you are blind, Rodney talked about how he felt that people wouldn’t want to be in a relationship with him because they see him being blind as a burden. One of the most important things I think they talked about was how having a disability can impact your probability of getting a job over someone who doesn’t require accommodations.

 A central focus of the film was also about transitioning from having sight to becoming blind. Each artist talks about how when they first started going blind, they would pretend that they were sighted and try to pass as being able to see. They talk about how difficult it really is to be pretending to be something you are not in order to feel normal. Rodney used a walking cane instead of a blind person’s cane at first because he didn’t want to be identified as blind right when people met him. Ryan talked about how he would memorize his books at a book reading so it would look like he was reading it, so people did not know he was blind. Kayla talked about using muscle memory to get around the city because she could not see where she was going. John talked about how he would use the small sliver of sight he had left to follow people’s feet in the streets and pretend he still had his sight. Overall each artist had their own story of how they pretended they were still sighted when they were transitioning from being able to see to being blind. This film was very positive, and I thought it incorporated a lot of things that need to be talked about in our current society.   

 Word Count: 1052

Works Cited

Harnett, Alison. “Escaping the ‘evil avenger’ and the’ supercrip’: Images of disability in popular television.” Irish Communications Review, vol. 8, 2000, pp. 21-29.

Kaufman, Peter, 2018. “Intersectionality for Beginners.”