Can You Read My Lips?
What's it like to use one sense to do the work of another?
0 – 5 | 2015 | Communication | Documentary | Live-Action | USA
Can You Read My Lips? is an immersive short from director David Terry Fine about lip-reading based on the essay “Seing at the Speed of Sound” by Rachel Kolb, affected by profound bilateral hearing loss, who also narrates and stars in the piece. By simulating a sensorial deprivation, the short offers the opportunity for viewers to experience what it would be like to try to understand what people are saying with only their sight. Specifically, it forces the viewer to experience the struggle of communicating only by way of lip-reading.
An interesting perspective that essentially reminds us how communication is useless, if it doesnt’ allow us to get in deep contact with people. A warning all the more valid if said by some who, like Kolb, lives a permanent of sensory impairment.
Tommaso Fagioli
