June 25th, 2012
Planet of Snail is screening at the ICA in London, but you can watch it online now wherever you are in the UK or Ireland. The documentary is available for Dogwoof.TV members now: membership is just £9.99 a month until the end of August, and allows you to watch the Dogwoof catalogue of films as well as selected new releases at the same time as cinemas.
Join Dogwoof.TV now and watch Planet of Snail today
Young-Chan has been deaf and blind since childhood. As he puts it himself, “In the beginning there was darkness and silence, and the darkness and silence were with god. And when ‘I’ arrived, they came to me.” Young-Chan has no idea how to participate in the world until he meets Soon-Ho, who also has a physical handicap. He marries her and learns to communicate with the outside world through her. By softly tapping each other’s finger, they can understand one another; it is sometimes as if they are tenderly playing a piano. This documentary follows the couple in the same gentle tempo as Young-Chan moves through his life. We see them replacing a lightbulb together, receiving friends, working on a theater piece, reading a book, and gliding on a sleigh down a mountain. These everyday scenes are accompanied by a poetic voice-over by Young-Chan, in which he reflects on his existence without sight and hearing. He feels like an astronaut, but that doesn’t mean he is without a sense of beauty in the world. This becomes palpable when Young-Chan touches the bark of a tree, runs his hand through sand, or brushes raindrops on a window pane with his fingertips.
Find out more about the film and read some of the stunning reviews on the website
