blind spot, die reise nach lyon (claudia von alemann, 1981)

a provocative, smart, yet woefully underappreciated debut film by the german writerdirector claudia von alemann, a contemporary of chantal akerman and helke sander, blind spot rekindles the forgotten history of flora tristan, the 19thcentury frenchperuvian socialist and feminist (and grandmother of paul gauguin), through the experiences of elisabeth, a quixotic scholar who leaves her husband and young daughter in germany in the hope of finding meaningful traces of tristans writing and activism in lyon, the french city where she spent her final months before her death in 1844 at age 41. as elisabeth wanders the streets alone, her tape recorder capturing the sounds of the present to divine untold stories of the pasti want to imagine what tristan might have heard, seen, or felt, elisabeth notes. colors, noises, all of alemann herself reflects on cinema as a tool of subjective sensory experience, history writing, and political action.