Boston-based docu filmmaker David Sutherland has spent the past decade trying to redefine the stylistic limits of the documentary. With "Out of Sight" he goes even further, creating what one interview subject suggests is closer to soap opera than the traditional talking-head documentary. After a test run at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, the pic heads to the Berlin Film Festival, which should be the first of many stops on the fest and arthouse circuit.

Film's subject is Diane Starin, a 34-year old blind woman living on a ranch in Northern California. While part of the story is her blindness -- she is seen doing everything from cleaning her artificial eyes to serving as a role model for others -- it's not really the main point.

As she notes, "I think people are ready for a story about a blind woman who's raising a family, having a career, or both. What I wonder is of they're ready for a blind woman who's in her 30s living with a man who's in his 60s, in a relationship that deals with alcohol and infidelity."

The people in her life are gradually introduced in both interviews and real-life situations. In a somewhat unusual technique for docus, Sutherland shows re-enactment of incidents from Starin's past using the actual people playing themselves, including a scene where her boyfriend nearly burns them both alive inside the camper.

Sutherland doesn't try to force sympathy for Starin. She comes across as someone all too human, with much to admire but also much to criticize.

After she breaks up with her older boyfriend, he is diagnosed with cancer. She comes back to live with him in a new house they will share. When he does better than his doctors anticipated, Starin calculates whether she can afford to wait for him to die so she will inherit his share of the house.

Sutherland's cast of real-life characters aren't freaks but simply folks trying to make the best of the hand that life has dealt them. In the end, the complex relationships carry the film, not any maudlin and easy concern for a "handicapped" person.

Sutherland's gritty cinema verité style is aided by the understated stylization of the flashbacks, which use a washed-out, nearly black-and-white look to convey the sense of recollection. Western-style music is provided by Reeves Gabrels, a guitarist/songwriter with David Bowie's band Tin Machine.


INSIGHT AND HUMOR COLOR A BLIND COWGIRL'S STORY
Betsy Sherman, Boston Globe

Newton-based documentarist David Sutherland nukes the concept of the "inspirational" film about a handicapped subject -- and in its place something both more memorable and more compassionate -- with his new work OUT OF SIGHT, a feature about California horse trainer Diane Starin, who has been blind since childhood. Sutherland straps us in for a ride through the surreal soap opera that is the 34-year-old Starin's life. As Starin candidly opens the curtain on her personal life, recounting travails and escapades that could serve as fodder for a country-and-western ballad, we see that hers is a life hardly circumscribed by her disability. In fact, at times it's easy to forget she's blind.

Not that Sutherland sacrifices Starin's dignity in favor of a rollicking good time. Quite the contrary, one feels that Starin has been treated as a collaborator in this enterprise, and her honesty in opening up her life is a commendably gutsy move. An irresistible quote sets the ball rolling, as Starin says, "I think people are ready for a story about a blind woman who's raising a family, having a career, or both. What I wonder is if they're ready for a blind woman who's in her 30s living with a man in his 60s, in a relationship that deals with alcohol and infidelity. In other words, I don't know if America is ready for a blind girl who isn't a goody two-shoes."

The cast of characters includes Diane's mother, Harriet, who seems to approach life with much less confidence than her blind daughter. Harriet's bilious husband, Ziggy, whose kindest words about Diane are that she's "a pain," makes a couple of striking appearances. Gillian is Diane's friend and confidante; their spirited girl-talk sessions take place in the near parody settings of the boudoir and by poolside.

Then of course there's Herb, Diane's partner and lover. Their mutual passion for horses grew into a relationship, and Diane moved in with the surly old cowpoke. Herb's alcoholism became a source of sorrow and terror -- especially when she was in the passenger seat of his truck -- for Diane. Her natural randiness, coupled with a need for tenderness that Herb couldn't provide, drive her into affairs with other men.

Sutherland rations information in a way that may transgress documentary orthodoxy, but contributes to the suspense of the movie. To give away just one of these "secrets," once we've found out the gory details of Diane's relationship with Herb, we also learn that he has cancer and may have only a short time to live. So although Diane is emotionally ready to move on, she feels obliged to stay with Herb. Sutherland also stages recreations of events in Diane's life, draining the color into near black-and-white to set off these flashbacks from "reality."

Diane's "healthy vanity," as Gillian puts it, and natural friskiness make her a charismatic subject. Sutherland's camera comes along as Diane and Gillian go honky-tonkin' and follows Diane out on the dance floor with a succession of partners. But we also see Diane at work breaking horses, and in her role as mentor for a 13-year-old blind girl. Diane gives the girl a cooking lesson, using Braille-labeled ingredients, and helps her find her way around the ranch with a cane. Diane's activism in the blind community is shown to be an integral part of her life.

Few documentaries provide the edge-of-your-seat enjoyment that OUT OF SIGHT does. Come to think of it, few Hollywood movies these days give as good a ride.


New York Magazine

OUT OF SIGHT launches the "P.O.V." summer season of independent nonfiction films with a bang instead of a whimper. David Sutherland's remarkable account of a 34-year-old California cowgirl, Diane Starin, has been around in art houses and at film festivals for almost two years. On television, which is always so pious about any physical disability, it still comes as a shock. That Diane has been blind since she was 18 months old has little or nothing to do with the way she conducts her life, a disorderly business of breaking horses, baling hay, washing out her glass eye before she goes to honky-tonks, and sleeping around on her sixtysomething boyfriend, all of which is cheerfully discussed on camera, including bad past times re-created for that camera by the principals themselves, including Diane's feisty mother and dreadful stepfather, in a washed-out sepia. Imagine a Bad Girl Huck Finn, or a country-and-western Philoctetes, insouciant on the verge of shameless.


"OUT OF SIGHT" OFFERS A SLICE OF AN UNCONVENTIONAL LIFE
Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune

Documentaries often absorb us primarily for their subjects. David Sutherland's OUT OF SIGHT, at the Film Center of the School of the Art Institute has a rich one: the tangled, rivetingly offbeat life of a 34-year-old Sacramento woman. Diane Starin, who rides and breaks horses, counsels local youth and leads an unconventional sexual life that beggars most fiction -- all despite her being blind since childhood.

It's hard to say which is more surprising: the story itself or the fact that Starin and people close to her have chosen to reveal themselves on camera in such painfuly intimate and image tarnishing ways. They're an amazing group: Diane's long-time companion and lover Herb, an ex-alcoholic 60ish cowboy, dying of cancer; her strong-willed mother Harriet and brutally dismissive stepfather Ziggy; her flirty sight-impaired best friend Gillian and the pickups and lovers Diane and Gillian meet in the local bars.

"I don't know if America is ready for a blind person who isn't a goody two-shoes," Diane says. Defying clichés, she's the most aggressive person in the movie, the one who makes things happen. (The film's unvarnished frankness is exemplified by a scene where she takes out her artificial eyes on camera.)

Sutherland, a Boston-based documentarian of unconventional approach, gives his movie the texture and TV immediacy of soap opera, mixing interviews, talks and cinema verité, with monochrome re-creations of Diane and Herb's past. The story has such bizarre twists, it would be a shame to give more away. Besides, director Sutherland and Starin herself will be present at all three screenings to bring audiences up to date.


EYES ON THE PRIZE: "OUT OF SIGHT" MAKES DISABILTY IRRELEVANT
Robin Dougherty, Boston Phoenix

Is American ready for "a blind woman who's in her 30s living with a man who's in his 60s, in a relationship that deals with alcohol and infidelity?" That's one question raised by OUT OF SIGHT, David Sutherland's engaging new documentary about Diane Starin, a woman who happens to be cheating on the seldom-sober cowboy she lives with. Diane also happens to be blind, but that's not what makes her a uniquely charismatic film subject. Rather, as anyone who's seen the film -- now enjoying an extended run at the Museum of Fine Arts -- can attest, what landed Diane in Sutherland's documentary wasn't her disability but her talent for unfettered self-revelation.

How does a documentary maker meet up with a born actress? Sutherland, the Boston-based filmmaker whose previous works include the critically acclaimed PBS documentary HALFTIME: FIVE YALE MEN AT MIDLIFE (1990) as well as a recent "American Experience" project that debunked George Washington, explains that he was put in touch with Diane by his executive producer, David Ticchi, who also happens to be blind, when Sutherland was putting together a project about stereotypes of blindness. Diane, who told him, "I think people are ready for a story about a blind woman who's raising a family, having a career, or both," had stereotype shattering on her agenda as well.

Dubbed a "soap-umentary" by its director, OUT OF SIGHT chronicles Diane's life, especially its messier aspects, which include not only her frank talk about her sexual appetite but also the affair she starts up some time after agreeing to stay with Herb, her live-in-significant other, who has been diagnosed with cancer. Among the supporting players are Diane's lively mother, her friend Gillian, and her stepfather, Ziggy, a mean-spirited fellow who jumps right into the menagerie of unforgettable non-fiction characters when his sniping about Diane reveals ugly things about himself. ("She'll give you a pork chop for a pig anytime.") Events that take place in Diane and Herb's past are re-enacted from Diane's point of view, with Herb and Diane playing themselves in dreamlike sequences that are interwoven with talking-head interviews.

Why would any couple submit themselves to the scrutiny of a filmmaker who sets up a camera in their bedroom? (One recurring shot shows the pair chewing over their relationship under the covers.) Says Sutherland, "Remember the Loud family? In "An American Family," the question you ask yourself was, 'Why would anyone do this?'" Sutherland's questions were answered when he went to California to meet Diane. "She was living with Herb. I knew she was living a double life, but I didn't know all the ramifications." Diane's motives were essentially self-interested. "She wanted people to know that she was capable." What about Herb? "He said it was because he wanted to stay with Diane."

What ensues is a portrait of a woman who serves as a big sister to a blind teenager while trying to navigate a moribund relationship with a man who admits, "I love drinking." "What became apparent as we got started was that she knew Herb as a drunk, she didn't know him that well sober. She was using the time to get to know him." Thanks to one re-enactment, we get to see what it was like for Diane when an intoxicated Herb came back late to their small camper and set it on fire.

Sutherland explains that he didn't set out to stretch the limits of documentary filmmaking with re-enactments, in the manner of, say, THE THIN BLUE LINE. Rather, when he met Diane, "We didn't realize that so much of the story took place in the past. In THE THIN BLUE LINE, Errol Morris has actors re-create the film's central incident. But when you're doing a portrait, who's your best source? I could have used actors. Or she could sit there and tell you, 'He abused me,' but you're not going to relate to it." When steering the viewer through several levels of reality, Sutherland admits, "the trickiest part was going from the past to the present." One thing that ties the film's visual themes together is an original score by Reeves Gabrels of the David Bowie band Tin Machine.

Says Sutherland, who (with co-producer and wife Nancy Sutherland) has received an invitation to bring the film to the Berlin Film Festival next month, "I think we did accomplish what we went after. We made a film about someone who happens to be blind. Because I think that whether one likes her or likes the film about her, you don't leave the film thinking about her blindness."