Land des Schweigens und der Dunkelheit (1971)

Land des Schweigens und der Dunkelheit: Directed by Werner Herzog. With Fini Straubinger, M. Baaske, Elsa Fehrer, Heinrich Fleischmann. Through examining Fini Straubinger, an old woman who has been deaf and blind since adolescence, and her work on behalf of other deaf and blind people, this film shows how the deaf and blind struggle to understand and accept a world from which they are almost wholly isolated.

“Herzogu0026#39;s documentary is a stunning revelation of what it means to be human. When we first see the profoundly disabled people on the screen, we shy away from them, disturbed to consider that these creatures might be people like ourselves. But through the love of the woman whose work Herzog captures here, we discover them as precisely what they — and we — are: human brothers and sisters endowed by God with both the need for love and an unimpaired (despite physical handicaps) capacity to love. Watching this movie some 20 years ago, I found this remarkable film one of the most exhilarating cinematic experiences of my life (and Iu0026#39;m now 55 and a veteran of many, many movies, and this film retains its wondrous place in my memory), a testament to the unity of the universal human family told with the artistu0026#39;s — Herzogu0026#39;s — aesthetic objectivity, yet clearly giving voice to a passionate embrace and advocacy of life, no matter how physically disabled.”