– Following in the footsteps of a French choir on tour in Japan, Stefano Canapa and Natacha Muslera have created a bold, inventive and spellbinding debut feature set in the world of the blind
“Once night had fallen and all the images had ceased, the villagers gathered around the Goze. They then had them touch the darkness (…), the darkness that exists and that which does not yet exist.” It is a remarkable experience to which Stefano Canapa and Natacha Muslera have chosen to dedicate their first venture into feature-length filmmaking with the fascinating and highly original Blind Song, which had its world premiere in the international competition at the 48th Festival Cinéma du réel. It is indeed through an exploratory and vibrant journey at the crossroads of several paths that the duo fully immerses the viewer in a unique space floating between songs and stories.
“Those women who sang in the night – you wanted to seek them out in the sound of the wind, to find their path again.” Now in its 14th year, the Tac-Til Choir includes several blind members, and it is their unique way of perceiving the world – through constant listening and an instinctive, imaginative attention to everything around them – that the film brilliantly seeks to capture. A sonic and tactile way of seeing the world that resonates with that of Japanese musicians who have now passed away after centuries of existence, in whose footsteps the French choir sets out from Kyoto (notably in the sacred Tadasu-no-Mori Forest) to Kanzai, via Kobe. Trios of blind, itinerant women and artists, the Goze, “their faces bathed in the shadow of their bamboo hats”, carried news from one village to another and sang – on the fringes of shamanism – to console the dead, accompanied by their shamisen (three-stringed lutes).
Trains, rivers, the patterns on tree bark, songs interwoven with the sounds of grass, water, wind and all the noises of nature, a breathtaking concert (like a form of free jazz never heard before) with The Otoasobi Project: the film blends and intertwines sounds (including the spellbinding electroacoustic music of Lionel Marchetti and the audio description for the film credits), darkness (with sequences of black that punctuate the 63 minutes) and light with captivating boldness, creating an almost dreamlike black-and-white atmosphere lulled by a voice-over attuned to the tone of the tale. Part group portrait of travellers, part historical investigation in ethnomusicology and part experimental film, the film succeeds in its aim to hybridise space and time and finds its own unique voice. The hybrid magic works: “We touch the black (…) Our eyes are broken. We begin to see.”
Blind Song was produced by Volte Film and co-produced by Off-Cells and Daltonica.
(Translated from French)
