Watch ‘Notes on Blindness’, directed by Peter Middleton and James Spinney, with audio description. This version uses spoken description to relate what’s happening outside of the dialogue. In his his writing, John Hull always sought to bring blind and sighted people closer together. In building on John’s work, ‘Notes on Blindness’ aims to be an inclusive and rewarding experience for all audiences. In the early 1980s, after decades of steady deterioration, writer and academic John Hull lost his sight. To help him make sense of the ensuing upheaval in his life, he began to keep an audio diary. Over three years, he collated over 16 hours of material; these recordings would form a unique testimony of loss, rebirth and renewal, excavating the interior world of blindness. Based on these original recordings and his published diaries ‘Touching the Rock’ (1991), ‘Notes on Blindness’ recreates Hull’s fascinating and deeply moving experiences through an immersive hybrid of documentary, dramatic reconstruction and highly sensory cinematic techniques and sound design. Sensitive, poetic and thought-provoking, the film charts Hull’s journey through emotional turmoil and spiritual crisis to a renewed perception of the world. Premiering at Sundance Film Festival 2016 and winner of the best documentary prize at San Francisco International Film Festival 2016, ‘Notes on Blindness’ is an ambitious and groundbreaking work - both affecting and innovative - and one of the most essential British documentaries of the year.
