Acting Blind

Adopting a fly-on-the-wall approach, Martin Duckworth's hour-long National Film Board of Canada-produced documentary Acting Blind, which follows a group of sight-impaired amateur actors as they rehearse a play, is a big-hearted, instructive, and inspiring film. The performers include a rather abrasive fellow whose remarks sometimes get on his colleagues' nerves, an anxious teenaged girl, a housewife-painter whose partial loss of sight compelled her to change her working technique, a young man whose inability to stop giggling threatens the performance, and a senior citizen with a professional background. Most touching of all is an elderly gentleman who not only has trouble remembering his lines, but must also contend with his wife's surgery during the middle of rehearsals. Judging from the excerpts we see, the play—a specially-written piece titled Dancing to Beethoven, about the difficulties of living without sight—is no masterpiece, but it's the process that's important, and Duckworth captures that nicely in this compelling film (which also includes an option for descriptive narration for the sight-impaired). Recommended. Aud: C, P. (F. Swietek)