Directed by Tran T. Kim-Trang • 1998 • United States

In 1992, Tran T. Kim-Trang came across a New York Times article about a group of hysterically blind Cambodian women in Long Beach, California, known as the largest group of such people in the world. Hysterical blindness is sight loss brought about by traumatic stress, and has few or no physical causes. EKLEIPSIS delves into two histories: the history of hysteria and the Cambodian civil war. Weaving together texts of these histories along with a composite case study of some of the hysterically blind Cambodian women and the artist’s mother, EKLEIPSIS speaks about the somatization of pain and loss.