Homo Patiens. O „Krainie ciszy i ciemności”
Homo Patiens. On “The Land of Silence and Darkness”

Summary/Abstract: This essay is dedicated to Werner Herzog's documentary film Land of Silence and Darkness. From the life of the deaf Fini Straubingen (1971). It is a chapter of a doctoral thesis entitled Documentary film as (anthropological) essay? The work of Werner Herzog (Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, Jagiellonian University, supervisor: Prof. Dariusz Czaja, 2024). The text is a detailed analysis and interpretation of Herzog's film. The author recalls the origins of the film, its previous interpretations (e.g. by William F. Wert), which he places in the broader context of the German director's oeuvre and his approach to documentary filmmaking. Despite the passage of time, Land of Silence and Darkness still proves to be an extraordinarily insightful study telling the story of the deaf-blind, of an existence we cannot understand, about the loneliness and oblivion that comes from constantly being in silence and darkness (although it is neither total silence nor absolute darkness), about the impossibility of understanding and expressing oneself, the consequence of which is the isolation of the deaf-blind. The humanist message of the documentary is all too clear, and the perspective adopted is close to committed anthropology.

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