What happens when you mix various threads of absolute or pure cinema, a metonymic vernacular from American Straight Photography, aesthetic and ideological strands from 1920s German photography movements, and a feminist American woman in Berlin between the fall of 1926 and the spring of 1929? The answer to this question may be Stella Simon’s 1928 film HANDS: THE LIFE AND LOVES OF THE GENTLER SEX (Germany), which she made at Berlin’s Technische Hochschule in collaboration with Miklós Bándy. Simon’s use of an array of stylistic discourses of early 20th century American and European modernism make this film a rich vessel of transatlantic cross-fertilization that resists a strict categorization into any singular hermeneutic or national model of avant-garde ideology. […] The use of human hands as characters in a dance inspired narrative are used to explore female experience and representation. By drawing upon experimental traditions found in international art, film, and photography movements of the 1920s, Simon transforms a simple melodramatic love story into an avant-garde feminist short film.
Jennifer Wild, in: Framework, March 2005
Following this film will be presented BLIND HUSBANDS
