Blindsight (Film)

Petr Cikhart Keith Partridge Mahyad Tousi Lucy Walker

Blindsight, alternatively Himalaya - The summit of happiness, is a documentary of the British documentary filmmaker Lucy Walker. The film runs from January 10, 2008 in the German cinemas.

Lucy Walker in 2004 with her film crew accompanied the blind mountain climber Erik Weihenmayer in the experiment with the students of the Tibetan school for the blind and the German tibetologist Sabriye Tenberken Lhakpa Ri the climb. The film is also a portrait of the story of Erik Weihenmayer and Sabriye Tenberken and their organization Braille Without Borders.

Weihenmayer is the first blind climber who has climbed Mount Everest. Sabriye Tenberken got in touch with him and developed him with the project to conduct six children of their school from Lhasa to the Lhakpa Ri, a 7,000 in the immediate vicinity of Mount Everest. Lucy Walker accompanied the blind students four months and told their story, which is characterized by a life as an outsider in a Tibetan society, the blindness perceives as a stigma. Only Sabriye Tenberken led the children out of their school for the blind in this life and gave them a future. The path to the top is then ultimately the goal of the expedition. The children do not reach the top though, but shows them the experience of mountain climbing that blindness does not have to just hot remoteness from life.

Premieres

The film premiered at the Toronto Film Festival on September 11, 2006. In Germany the film was first shown at the 2007 Berlinale in the Panorama section.

Reviews

" During the expedition of the path is the goal and that is difficult enough. The blind see beautiful nature, but they feel the power and the will to do something very special. It is this aspect comes in the film out very well without the whole thing comes across too clichéd. Hats off! "

Awards

• 2006 film for a British Independent Film Award for Best British Documentary category was nominated.
• 2007, the film received the Panorama Audience Award in the Panorama section of the Berlinale 2007.