Her Socialist Smile

One of the most singular voices in US independent cinema, Boston- based filmmaker John Gianvito continues his inquiries into radical subjective positions. In his latest documentary essay, he reflects on pioneering leftist thinker, suffragist, and apologist of a global socialist revolution Helen Keller (1880–1968). Gianvito’s portrait of Keller can be seen as a continuation and expansion of his Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind, which recalled certain protagonists of the progressive movement in the US, inspired by historian Howard Zinn. Helen Keller became both blind and deaf as a child, but later went on to graduate college. The film follows some of her most important public appearances and comments, starting with her speech “Out of the Dark” (1913). Gianvito’s narrative visual style has an almost elemental quality, when he crossfades voiceovers and silent written text passages by Keller with ever shifting close-ups of the structure of snowy boughs, ice or timber. It’s another highly idiosyncratic work of poetry, didactics, and agitprop at the service of a bottom-up view of history, at once an appreciation and analysis of Keller’s theses on capitalism. It’s no spoiler to say that they are just as valid 100 years on.

Gunnar Landsgesell, Viennale.at