Turning a Blind Eye

TURNING A BLIND EYE is a story about strabismus. There is no didactic surgery. Rather we encounter a plethora of strabismic links with a lighthouse, medieval churches, kings and presidents, a Lancaster bomber, Bach and Handel, films stars and poisons. A Victorian drawing room toy leads us to the evolution of a whole new ophthalmic profession - orthoptics. The film explores the basic visual pathways involved in stereopsis, starting with an extraordinary instrument - the ophthalmotrope and the sequelae of their disturbance - namely the ocular deviation of the sufferer and its social unacceptability in the eye of the beholder.