DOCUMENTARY; 1hr 44min
DIRECTED BY: Lucy Walker
Blind courage: ascending Lhakpa Ri
29,035 feet. That’s the summit of Mount Everest and for myriad reasons, it’s a magnet for those testing their limits. One of them is blind climber Erik Weihenmayer, who reached “the rooftop of the world” in 2001, then wrote a book about it. In turn, Erik was so inspired by blind teacher Sabriye Tenberken and her Tibetan school Braille Without Borders that in 2004 he and his team undertook an expedition with six of its children, up 23,114-foot Lhakpa Ri in the Himalayas.
Documentary maker Lucy Walker went along for a climb that is as much about cultural perceptions and personal mountains as physicality. For the children, every step is a victory, as from an against-all-odds beginning, Blindsight evolves into an exploration of interior human landscapes in all their daring, their fallibility and their capacity for growth and change.
