This week, I had the pleasure of attending a screening of Blindsight, the short listed Oscar hopeful and audience award-winning doc from AFI Fest directed by Lucy Walker (Devil’s Playground).

Sabriye Tenberken and her partner Paul Kronenberg run a school for blind children in Tibet, the only one in existence. But the school isn’t just about teaching the kids reading, writing and self-sufficiency, they face the additional hurdle of trying to overcome very negative social stigma of being blind in that particular area of the world. Enter Erik Weihenmayer, a blind mountain climber with the distinction of being the first blind climber to summit Mt. Everest. There is some footage of this in the film and it’s astonishing.

Sabriye wrote to Erik in the hopes that he would visit her students and bring them some of the courage and inspiration that drives him. Erik, totally impressed with the work Sabriye was doing, decided if he was going to go, he wanted to do more than just visit – he wanted to take kids mountain climbing, Not just mountain climbing, but to the summit Lhakpa-Ri, located right next to Everest and a daunting 23,000 feet high.

The film is at once what you would expect with this set up and also unexpected in many ways but it taught me a very important lesson.

Someone in the audience after the screening wondered if Erik’s desire and subsequent insistence on summiting the mountain wasn’t exploitative of the children. That reminded me of how I reacted to another soon-to-be documentary hit, We Are Together by Paul Taylor. We Are Together follows a group of orphaned children in South Africa who try to make a career out of singing to bring much needed cash and stability to their group home. The central story of Blindsight is very much about the relationship of two charismatic, driven white people to the brown, underprivileged children and their families; We Are Together is less about such a relationship during the majority of the film but if definitely comes up near the end, and in both films, it’s hard not to observe “Oh, look how the white people are helping them.”

Yes, it’s always heartwarming to see people helping people, no matter their color, but when you are sitting in an audience of Westerners watching a film made by Westerners and depicting other Westerners doing good deeds, yes, it can feel exploitative. I understand where the question came from. But I had another thought after watching Blindsight: the kids chose to climb the mountain because they wanted to spend time with Erik, who is a hero to all blind people (and should be to sighted folks as well) no matter their color. They chose to do something that set them apart in a positive way, not simply because they are blind. And they did so without the support of their families, or perhaps in spite of lack of support. This point could have been punctuated more by the filmmaking, but it is there.

The idea I’m getting at is that while Westerners are getting something out of the story, so too are the subjects. It is unfair to assume that the underprivileged people in these stories don’t understand how to take advantage of an opportunity or that they are unaware that there is an opportunity. The term ‘exploitation’ implies that one side is not gaining anything while the other side is taking anyway, knowing that. I don’t think that is the case with either of these projects. Both show remarkable children accomplishing great feats to make their lives better though it is not without assistance from people more privileged than they. Who among us hasn’t benefited from someone with more? I realized after watching Blindsight that it is unfair to these films and the subjects to assume that just because we are viewing an unequal relationship (and what doc isn’t about an unequal relationship?), that we are viewing exploitation.

I highly recommend you catch both films when they come around. And though it is a bit early, I’m going to make a New Year’s resolution to be less cynical about the stories that I’m watching. Both films will be around the festival circuit next year, and I believe We Are Together was acquired by HBO at IDFA, so if not in theaters, it will definitely be on cable after it’s festival run.

And if you didn’t click on the link above, since it’s the holiday season and nearly tax year end, if you are looking to donate, Braille Without Borders is Sabriye’s organization and they are need of funding to continue their work. In addition to the school in Lhasa, she and Paul are starting a training program to teach the model for running such schools and will be opening new schools in India. You can also buy the CD of the amazing South African children from We Are Together, with proceeds going directly to their home, Agape.