Directed by Tran T. Kim-Trang • 2000 • United States

ALEXIA is an experimental video about word-blindness and metaphor. Word-blindness is a condition that usually afflicts people who have suffered a stroke, causing them to lose the visual recognition of individual letters but perceive the entire word, or vice versa. Metaphor is here discussed in its function to reveal and obscure perception. Divided into five short sections, ALEXIA opens with a quote from a well-known Buddhist passage (“Do not mistake the finger for the moon”) and goes on to present Giambattista Vico’s theory of the origin of language and Ludwig Wittgenstein’s theory of aspect-blindness.