The Blindness of the Woods (2009)

A blind woman living in the woods. The winter is cold, especially when you are alone. Then, one day a blond, strong woodcutter knocks on her door. And her senses revive, as she rediscovers the joys of love and sex. Described in this way, it sounds like the weak plot of the soppiest novel ever. Instead, this is a hilarious "soft-porn"film, full of references to Russ Meyer (even in the credit, s) and to German erotic productions of the 70s, as well as to Todd Haynes' Far From Heaven. With the not insignificant detail that the characters are real people dress up as puppets…

In the short film, The Blindness of the Woods, writers and directors Martin Jaljen and Javier Lourence of Amautalab (Amautalab is a multidisciplinary creative studio co-founded by Martin Jalfen and Carlos Battilana) take us on a journey that explores loneliness, betrayal, and passion. They do so by dressing up actors in sock-puppet costumes that only the Swedish would dream up (no offense, it’s very creative). This film seems like a lovely story of longing and heartfelt desire, but trust me, there is more hardcore (or should I say “softcore”?) action than you can shake a twig at. If you need any other convincing, check out what the characters have to say for themselves, then see the film for yourself.

“Our work is about pushing creativity across traditional and new media platforms.” ‘The Blindness of The Woods’ is a project that they have dubbed a new genre – “Cute Porn”. “Everything started by watching porn at the studio. It’s not that we do that very often but let’s say that we were doing that. And while we were watching it we started talking about the different types of porn, and we divided it into two: Hard Porn and Soft Porn. From there we came up with the term Cute Porn. Right away we liked the idea of creating two worlds that apparently couldn’t match, the cute and the porn world. Actually that was our challenge. We tried to confront those 2 extremes along the process, through opposite temperatures: cold and hot. The short is about the encounter of these 2”. “Shot in super 16mm. The trees, the forest, the cabin and the snow, are fake. They are part of a set we had designed in a big studio in Buenos Aires, in the neighborhood of Munro where you can find jackets at a great price. We always liked the idea of not having anything real in the set, to reinforce the concept of fairy tale. For the wide shots we built a big scale model of the cabin and forest with mountains painted in the background….