ANATOMY OF THE FILM
SYNOPSIS
A blind person is probably the least person you’d expect to be a photographer. SHOT IN THE DARK is an intimate portrait of three successful artists who have one thing in common: visual impairment as a starting point for their visual explorations. This film poses fundamental questions about seeing and the imagination and enriches our understanding of perception and creation. We all close our eyes in sleep, the sighted and blind alike, and in our dreams – we see.
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT
It was a coincidence. I stumbled upon the work of these blind photographers while doing the prep work to the feature film about a blind teenager, CAMERA OBSCURA (Spain, 2011). I was the cameraman on the movie, and the director Maru Solores and I were deliberating on how blind people experience the world around them, whether or not they experienced light impressions or saw fantasy or dream images, and how we could convey such things using the language of our film camera. While researching, I found a catalog from the California Museum of Photography on the exhibition SIGHT UNSEEN, which featured the works of 15 blind artists.
Some of the pictures left a strong, lasting impression on me. I found them extremely unusual, almost alien, and at the same time unpretentious and direct. They remained in my mind’s eye long after my research was completed, teasing and disturbing me. While on a film shoot in the USA, I decided to contact two of the artists and we ended up meeting in person. The visit lasted much longer than I had planned, for we immediately immersed ourselves in a stimulating conversation about questions such as: How do ideas form in our head? How do we create our pictures before we even snap the camera? What form do the images finally take on the photographic material; what surprises arise while taking the photos; what occasionally uncontrollable, independent dynamics are innate to the process? And what concepts and ideas can in turn be drawn from the finished pieces upon viewing? “I see my images with eyes as well,” contended Pete Eckert during this first visit, “just through the eyes of others.” The triad of “artist – artwork – viewer” shifts dizzyingly in the artistic endeavors of these blind visionaries.
We remained in contact in the months that followed, and as I got to see more and more of their works it became clear to me: the mysteriousness of these pictures and the work methods of these artists spurn any quick answers. I ruminated time and again over how these blind maintained their desire, energy, and endurance to keep doing and developing their artwork over all the years despite all the physiological barriers. To push further and deeper instead of throwing down the towel at the intractability of their approach. On the contrary, they never stopped refining their individual intuition and technique. Is the fascination of their photography perhaps intrinsically based on the improbability of their work? The more discussions I had with the artists, the more I began to hope to discover something new, something previously unknown to me, about the creation of photographic images and about the phenomena of light. Is it perhaps, paradoxically, the very lack of light that even allows the true appreciation of the beauty and diversity of light, and above all engenders such an idiosyncratic and virtuosic utilization of it? And is the orchestration of light, for the blind artists, an enrapturing end in itself? To be able to function, do the limitations posed by blindness maneuver within an aesthetic enfranchisement far removed from the endemic laws of the business of art and/or our daily receptive impressions and attenuations?
“Because you can see, you don’t use your senses and your imagination to the full extent – you’re satisfied much too quickly,” Sonia Soberats once said to me during the film shoot. “The power of the imagination of the sighted lags behind their possibilities.” The focus of my curiosity began to turn ever more to this mysterious imaginative power, and the photographs themselves proved to be the richest conduit to the fantasy world of these artists. That is why, in the film, great focus is placed on the consideration of the pieces. My perception and imagination have been greatly opened and expanded by these encounters. As a colleague said to me after a test screening: “After this experience, I have the impression that these blind people see more than we do.
CREDITS
“Footage
Film-Materials
I see
The photographer Pete Eckert standing at a crossing
I close my eyes
I try to understand space
I try to feel
Keeping my eyes closed
That’s how it started for me
Shot In The Dark”
Bernd Euscher
(Bernd Euscher and Gesa Marten edited the film)
WITH:
Oliver Krisch
Hashim Kirkland
Steven Erra
Rossanna Garcia
Manuel Alejandro Velasquez
Manuel Velasquez
Desirée Garcia
Gayle Funke
Lidia Moran
Nakari Bracamonte
Valerie Hall
Christina Hall
James Hall
Jack Hall
Amy M. Eckert
The dogs Hunter
and Colonel „Bunny“ Clancy
David Royer
PRODUCERS
Kristina Konrad
Christian Frosch
Iin Co-Production with
Westdeutscher Rundfunk WDR
In association with ARTE
COMMISSIONING EDITOR
Sabine Rollberg
DIRECTED, SCRIPTED AND FILMED BY
Frank Amann
EDITED BY
Bernd Euscher
Gesa Marten, BFS
MUSIC COMPOSED BY
FM Einheit
SOUND RECORDIST
Shinya Kitamura
SOUND POSTPRODUCTION
Shinya Kitamura
SOUND DESIGN
Sebastian Tesch
Shinya Kitamura
FOLEY ARTIST
Daniel Weis
FOLEY RECORDIST
Florian Holzner
RE-RECORDING MIXER
Martin Steyer
SCRIPT CONSULTANT
Olaf Winkler
LINE PRODUCER
Kristina Konrad
VFX ARTIST
Andreas Schellenberg
COLORIST
Natalia Maximova
TITLES
Susanne Beer
SUBTITLES
Raúl Zrapf
Marielle Pohlmann
TRANSLATION AND TRANSCRIPTION
Bryan Abraham
Hannah Bondy
Mijal Bloch
PRODUCTION CONSULTANTS
Martin Roelly, Hupefilm COLOGNE
Katrin Springer
PRODUCTION ACCOUNTANT
Bernhard Rand
POSTPRODUCTION PRODUCER
Undine Simmang, cine plus Cologne GmbH
ONLINE EDITOR
Walter Just
AVID SUPPORT
Anke Trojan
Daniel Scheimberg
Zwi Zausch
AUDIODESCRIPTION
Deutsche Hörfilm Gemeinnützige GmbH (DHG)
CREW CALIFORNIA
UNIT PRODUCTION MANAGEMENT
Boris Schaarschmidt
UNDERWATER-CAMERA
Ron Moore (Dive Catalina)
HIGH SPEED OPERATOR
Tyler Whitbread
SOUND RECORDIST FOR TRAILER
Martin Ehleben
CREW NEW YORK CITY
SERVICEPRODUCER
Sabine Schenk, Sabine Schenk Productions
LOCATIONSCOUT AND ADDITIONAL SOUND-RECORDING
Diego Reiwald
DRIVER
Rob Plonskier
PRODUCTION SERVICES AND FACILITIES
Cameras Canon C300 and C500
Ludwig Camera Rentals Cologne
See You Rent
A B Sea Cameras L.A.
Hollywood Special Ops LLC
James Rodney Stolz
INSURANCE
Caninenberg & Schouten GmbH
CAR RENTALS
medias Reiseservice
MUSIC
Selected Tracks composed and performed by FM Einheit
Additional Guitars: Caspar Brötzmann
E Lucevan Le Stelle (from Tosca by Giacomo Puccini)
Interpreted by Enrico Caruso (1904)
Ohime! Morir me sento (from Aida BY Giuseppe Verdi)
Wiener Singverein (1959)
Marta (by Moises Simóns)
Interpreted by Perez Prado (1958)
El Manisero (Traditional)
interpreted by Don Azpiazu (1930)
Fantasy in Space (by Otto Luening)
courtesy of Anthology of Recorded Music, INC.
DBA New World Records (1952)
Nessun Dorma (from Turandot by Giacomo Puccini)
Interpreted by Alessandro Valente (1927)
PROLOGUE QUOTATION FROM
The Labyrinth of Night – A Personal Essay
by Steven Erra
SCRIPT FUNDING
German Federal Film-Board FFA
PROJECT DEVELOPMENT FUNDING
Gerd Ruge Stipendium
THE PROJECT WAS PRESENTED AT
DOK Leipzig Co-Production Meeting
DOK.Forum Munich
PRODUCTION FUNDING
Federal Government Commissioner For Culture And The Media BKM
Film- und Medienstiftung NRW