Within the private essay movie “I Didn’t See You There” the filmmaker, Reid Davenport, makes an prolonged try to completely embody his viewpoint with the assistance of kinetic camerawork. As an artist with a incapacity, Davenport navigates the world in a wheelchair, with verve and little endurance for the obstacles others can pose, each bodily and ideological.
His journeys round Oakland, Calif., and throughout the nation to go to his caring household in Connecticut lead him to mirror on “being checked out and never seen,” as he places it, in addition to on the labor of simply going about his enterprise in a world that doesn’t at all times have his wants in thoughts. His occasional meditations in voice-over are punctuated by pointed encounters with strangers, from flight attendants to an impressed neighbor, and an energizing percussive soundtrack.
Davenport additionally dwells on dazzling views of the patterned surfaces — corresponding to colourful pavements and partitions — that he rolls previous. These counsel a heightened consideration to potential hazards, however additionally they evoke the joyous run-on reels of avant-garde diarists just like the filmmaker Jonas Mekas.
Davenport’s circumstances are totally different, after all. His mobility is usually depending on others, and he retains the digicam off himself, in distinction with the various dramas that flip folks with disabilities into passive topics. When he encounters a circus massive high that has been erected in his neighborhood, he laments its galling presence and its related historical past of freak reveals.
Together with his characteristic, Davenport stakes out his personal vantage level on the world, one which leaves a viewer wishing to listen to his ideas elaborated even additional.
I Didn’t See You There
Not rated. Operating time: 1 hour 16 minutes. In theaters.