Fine Line Features | The Five Senses

The power of an image to excite our imagination or bring back a memory. A photo can have a talisman-like significance

"She has always been an observer, rather than a participant. But as she goes on this adventure of voyeurism, she discovers her sexuality and herself as a maturing woman through watching and studying people."
--Nadia Litz on Rachel

To see something clearly is one of the most wondrous experiences of life, as Rachel, a rebellious teenager played by Nadia Litz learns in The Five Senses. Wracked with contradicting feelings after losing sight of the child she was babysitting in the park, Rachel is drawn into a daring game of voyeurism that helps her to gain a new point of view.

If you were to judge by the brain power devoted to it, sight is the most vital human sense. More than 70 percent of the body's neuro-receptors are in the eyes, which take in an unbelievable amount of data every moment they are open -- colors and shapes to the finest details and shadings that lead up to the ineffable essence of beauty. Still, the real vision work is not done in the eyes but in the brain, which interprets the information the eye receives - sometimes with mystifying results. Scientists have learned that vision is not a faithful reproduction of reality at all, but a matter of perception. It is quite possible to fool the brain, as "tricks of the eye" prove.

Promising young actress Nadia Litz sees Rachel Seraph as a girl experiencing a most unusual coming-of-age, one obsessed with truly seeing those around her. "Rachel has always been very independent and totally in her own world. She is one of those people who is on the outside looking in," observes Litz. "She has always been an observer, rather than a participant. But as she goes on this adventure of voyeurism, she discovers her sexuality and herself as a maturing woman through watching and studying people."

Jeremy Podeswa was impressed not only with Nadia Litz's understanding of sight but with her instincts about the human soul. "Nadia is an unusual and brave actress," he comments. "She did all kinds of things in this film that were truly challenging for an actress of any age and she pulled it all off."