The Blind Spot of Perception

“The following film in no way intends to spread conspiracy theories. There are no lizard people who wish to subjugate humanity through covert hybridization.” Michael Gülzow’s The Blind Spot of Perception begins with this warning, and then proceeds to document the subjugation of humanity by lizard people, expertly applying conspiracy-theoretical logic.

Gülzow’s found footage takes us back to 1996, where the action begins, not entirely coincidentally, on April 1st. Two MiniDV tapes serve as evidence, recording the investigations of Alina and Flora, two students at Vienna Technical University, who are studying paranormal phenomena. The evidence piles up in interviews with pot-smoking tinfoil hat wearers, a skeptical sociology professor, and the author of the ultimate lizard conspiracy bestseller, and accumulates further as the two young women dig through pop culture archives that are underpinned by such unassailable luminaries as William Shatner and John Carpenter. The reptiloids have long been among us. After all, they were already present at the launching of the Titanic, as can be discovered in the black-and-white classic film A Night to Remember.

Fiction thus becomes documentary and vice versa. By appropriating the methods of conspiracy theorists, Gülzow also turns his inventive mockumentary into a thriller. It’s a comedy anyway, and not just because of the lovingly comic details everywhere (like when the heroines are described as stretched “like a rubber band around an elephant”). The lizard mystery can only be solved by watching all episodes of the sitcom ALF simultaneously – a sublime spectacle, but one that, in 1996, required 101 screens and VCRs! Thus ironically, The Blind Spot of Perception is also a major historical feature-length film made with practically no budget. The guaranteed low-resolution MiniDV material creates a wonderful retro aesthetic complete with cascades of pixels, into which Gülzow’s narrative dives with a nod to The Blair Witch Project in order to savor the madness that has since exploded in the Internet era. The conspiracy theories fall on fertile ground in the wake of the new right-wing populism, which is conjured up by the film’s then-contemporary radio interviews with Jörg Haider, the politician who was central to the resurgence of the far right in Austria. (Christoph Huber)

Translation: John Wojtowicz