From the Toronto Star:

Toronto’s Don McKellar is interviewed in Cannes, France, about his upcoming film, which depicts the panic and violence that follows an unexplained epidemic of blindness. The film, starring Jualianne Moore, was chosen to open the Cannes Film Festival this week and will also compete for the coveted Palme d’Or.

McKellar is hoping viewers will recognize Blindness as a film that deals in bigger ideas than just terrifying people.

“We shouldn’t be scared of blind people. They’re not monsters. To me, humanity is exposed when people are blind; they’re not dehumanized.”

McKellar’s previous high-profile film about global calamity was Last Night, his directorial feature debut a decade ago about the end of the world.

Earlier post, with video, here.

From the Wall Street Journal:

New York’s Museum of Modern Art conducts tours for people with visual impairments, encouraging them to don disposable gloves and explore selected works. The tours have been going on for 35 years. Other museums offering similar programs include Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, the Art Institute of Chicago and New York’s Lower East Side Tenement Museum.

“I’ve had people say ‘how can you give tours to the blind?” said [lecturer Richard] Turnbull, who in addition to his chores at MoMA is chairman of the art history department at the Fashion Institute of Technology. “They don’t understand it’s possible to appreciate art in ways that are not entirely visual. People who actually can see a work don’t see it the same way another sighted person does, so in a lot of ways this program is all about the plurality of experience that people have with works of art.”

From ESPN:

Dale Davis of Alta, Iowa, bowled a perfect game this month. The 78-year-old Davis is blind.

According to James Benton, president of the American Blind Bowling Association, a 300 game is a rarity for someone with impaired vision. In the association’s 60-year history, Benton said, his organization is aware of only four perfect games thrown by someone who is legally blind. And no one with complete loss of vision is known to have bowled a 300.

“It is extremely rare,” Benton said.

From the Orlando Sentinel:

An increasing number of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are losing their eyesight not because of bullet or bomb wounds but in what doctors suspect is a delayed reaction to the constant pounding of nearby explosives.

Studies conducted by the military have estimated that up to 20 percent of the 1.7 million troops who have served and returned from Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from mild traumatic brain injury, most often as a result of roadside bombs, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars.

Bill Wilson, a blindness-rehabilitation specialist at the Orlando VA Medical Center, sees a coming wave of woe. “We won’t know for months,” he said. “We can see the individuals and they may be perfectly fine, and then down the line they have problems.”

… Preliminary results from a pilot study suggested that as many as 70 percent of severely wounded soldiers treated for traumatic brain injuries also complain of double vision, difficulties in reading, blindness and other vision problems.

Epic depicts city besieged by mass plague

From the Toronto Star:

The Cannes Film Festival has selected Blindness, produced by Toronto’s Niv Fichman, for its coveted opening night slot on May 14, the Toronto Star has learned.

In this dark $25 million epic, an unnamed city is struck by a plague in which 90 per cent of the population go blind. Julianne Moore stars as one of the few people who are immune, struggling to take care of her husband played by Mark Ruffalo. Some of the characters, quarantined in an asylum for the insane, band together and fight for their human rights.

The movie is set for release in September. Trailer below.

From the Sydney [Australia] Morning Herald:

Expectant mothers will be able to insure their unborn babies against pregnancy complications, birth defects and even death under a new policy offered by insurance giant ING. The program is called the first of its kind in Australia, possibly the world, and will be aimed at the growing population of older mothers. Premiums rise with the age of the mother.

The policy will pay $50,000 to mothers whose children have disabilities such as blindness and deafness or other congenital malformations, including spina bifida, Down syndrome, cleft palate and heart disorders.

A spokeswoman for an Australian midwives association criticized the new program. “Insurance companies are going to go wherever they can to make a buck,” she said. “Fifty thousand dollars is not going to go very far in caring for a sick child. It is marketing fear and uncertainty when women are vulnerable during pregnancy.”

Writing in the New York Times, Jeremy W. Peters explains how Gov. David A. Paterson adapts to the demands of being New York’s chief executive. (Left, Paterson is guided through security by his press secretary, Errol Cockfield.)

… behind the scenes, Albany is a different place since Mr. Paterson was sworn in last month. With a blind man in charge — the governor can see nothing out of his left eye and only color and large objects out of his right — everything from speech preparation to the instructions for the staff at the governor’s mansion has been custom-fitted to Mr. Paterson’s needs.

… Although Mr. Paterson often says he does not want people to go out of their way for him, he says society should recognize that he and other blind people cannot do everything on their own.

As one of his first acts as governor, he added instructions to his official state Web site on how to enlarge the type on the screen.

“It’s just being more sensitive to people who feel that government and institutions ignore them,” he said.