Wednesday 25 November 2015

REVIEW - HAND GESTURES (FRANCESCO CLERICI)


The process of artistic creation - the sculpture and the film. Artisans alike both before and behind the camera lens, their techniques documented by the objectivity of the unyielding, unthinking materials employed in this process, examined by the subjectivity of the ever-thinking people who employ those materials. Hand Gestures is no less about those before the camera lens than those before the cinema screen, observing and consuming, completing the process of artistic creation by interpreting the nature of this art in its intended habitat. Francesco Clerici intends us to understand the detail, rather than any kind of identifiable intention - Hand Gestures is about movement and manipulation, materials and their qualities, their essential artistic value that allows them to be manipulated at all. Rough, unformed substances in shabby surroundings, that value brought forth in Hand Gestures' sumptuously clear sound design and in the simplicity of Clerici's direction. He captures these processes with a candour that makes them transfixing to behold - transfixing, entrancing... you may fall into a trance yourself, so slight is this unassuming documentary, so resolute is Clerici never to stress the innate profundity of what he documents here. It's a film that may not stay with you, though one's memory of what Hand Gestures represents may just, nestled in the depths of one's mind. It's certainly not a film that you'll want to forget.

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