Part of Winter 2012
Pleasure Dome is pleased to present the Toronto premiere of Steve Sanguedolce’s fifth feature film, Blinding (2011, 72 min.)
Vision, in all of its manifestations, permeates the disclosures of the three characters that journey us through Blinding: Jackie, a lesbian police officer grappling with the corroding forces of perception both within and outside her profession; Jamie, for whom the horrors of the Rwandan genocide are tempered by the distance offered by technologies of the military industrial complex; and Ryan, who has progressively lost his sight, retaining just one per cent of vision in one eye. In attending to vision and its primacy in Western society, Sanguedolce materializes the traumas it inflicts, whether through the imperceptibility of truth and its subjective red herrings, obfuscations and blind-spots, or the moment where recognition changes you forever—often for the worse. Blinding couples the confessional intimacy of a documentary with a hypnotic panoply of hand dyed images, luring its audience into a compromise between visual skepticism and optical sumptuousness.
Winner Special Mention Award for Feature Length Documentary at plus Camerimage International Film Festival of the Art of Cinematography in Bydgoszcz, Poland.
On Blinding:
A hypnotic, mesmerizing journey which will both challenge and haunt the viewer”. Baibre Holmes, Raindance Film Festival.
“Sanguedolce is a true poet of images” SoleLuna Festival, Italy.
“If you get to see one film this festival… it’s modern day alchemy … a ravishing feast of textures and tones”. Don O’Mahony, Corona Cork International Film Festival.
“The desire to push the boundaries of image in this genre may be the key to Sanguedolce’s approach to filmmaking”. Emmet O’Brien, FILM IRELAND.
“Adventuresome documentary — with expressionistic visuals beautifully hand-colored on 16mm. Always interesting”. Dennis Harvey, VARIETY.
“A complex and compelling narrative of unusual beauty and power. Seattle Gay Scene, Weekly.
“A bold mix, expertly put together, that will lead you to see the world in a whole new way. Andy Spletzer, Seattle International Film Festival.
BIO:
Canadian filmmaker Steve Sanguedolce has always been interested in home movies. Only during his tenure at Sheridan College (1978-81) was he given the tools to grant this interest expression. Trained in the personal documentary ethos of the Escarpment School, Sanguedolce started creating a body of work that peers relentlessly into the darkest and most private moments of the self. Blinding is his fifth feature. Sanguedolce has been an active member of Toronto’s independent film community for over thirty five years winning numerous international awards. His work has screened at several prestigious international film festivals including Rotterdam, Toronto, Mannhiem-Heidelberg, Oberhausen, Montreal’s World Film Festival as well as several others. Over the past 15 years he has been hand developing and hand colouring motion picture film to great acclaim. Much of his time has been spent teaching at local universities, community colleges or conducting independent filmmaking workshops around the world.
