Blind Body

Allison Chhorn (The Plastic House, VdR 2020) returns with a sensorial portrait of her partially-blind grandmother Kim Nay. To describe the daily life of this woman, exiled in Australia after the Cambodian genocide, she films her as close as possible to her body. With a small camera, she creates a visual universe made of shadow and blur, evoking the perceptions of her grandmother, and completed by very expressive sound work. Kim Nay’s great-granddaughter, still a baby, is sometimes with her. Paradoxically, their sensory experiences seem to intersect, the latter’s sight emerging as one the other’s vanishes. And when memories of the past spring up, Kim Nay talks about the hardships of the past and the experience of the Cambodian genocide; it is the events that deeply scarred her body that are most vivid. With Blind Body, Allison Chhorn questions the connections between body and memory, and how the latter is passed down through the generations. With infinite gentleness, the film paints a moving portrait of this woman.

Alice Riva