The Eyes of Me

The Eyes of Me. Directed by Keith Maitland.

Sort of expected the way it would have been about shooting blind people before the play, and for most of the part I still enjoyed it very much. When I first knew that they were going to screen this film, I kind of worried about the stereotype thing which always should be avoided either in photo story or video story when describing a certain group of people. Surprisingly, this film had done excellent job to show these four teens are actually not different from everyday people who struggle with school and relationship during their teen years as well. It’s just the four teenagers in the film can’t see.

Basically, it’s a story about four teens from Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired, Chas, Meagan, Denise and Issac. The director not only used lens to tell the story, but also engaged in using animation to complement the story by inserting the world those blind people “see”. More importantly, it showed the mix of real and virtual world to give audience an answer of their curiosity about blind people.

The film started with the scene where birds were flying from the trees. A sort of sense of freedom was given. I like the way that the director tried to contrast normal high school and TSBVI life. Things we used to take for granted seem so difficult for them. However, I felt the animation has been used too much to some extent. Sometimes it came up so abruptly and disturbed the rhythm of the story, which made me confused about the exact purpose behind.

The story line was well-organized in following their academic year in TSBVI. Though I don't exactly know why the director chose the characters like Chas and Meagan who still have their visual memories instead of focusing on ones who were born to be blind. But somehow it made this film closer to us, telling people that the ones who have been trying harder than us just to survive.