Poison Ivy
1979 · 12m · Canada
Directed by Richard James Martin
Genres: biography, documentary
Tones: contemplative, tender
Legally blind since infancy with only minimal sight, 66-year-old Ivy Granstrom fills her days with jogging, skiing, bowling, gardening and carpentry, refusing to let vision loss narrow her life.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Everyone expects the inspirational disability doc to genuflect at its subject's courage—Martin refuses, just lets Ivy *be*, which somehow makes the whole thing more subversive than any gimmick could.
A measured, observational piece that inherits the patient formalism of Direct Cinema while resisting sentimentality; the restraint is the whole argument.
The film's power lives in a single editorial choice: never cutting away from Ivy's hands during the carpentry and gardening, trusting the viewer to understand capability through friction and focus rather than explanation.