Hands on

An NFB documentary explores the phenomena behind our fingertips

by MATTHEW HAYS

Filmmaker Tamás Wormser had some trouble getting people to back his latest film, Faces of the Hand. This is, after all, a straightforward ode to the human hand. "I realize this is a very difficult film to categorize," says the Montreal-based director. "It's too experimental to be mainstream, and too mainstream to be experimental."

Faces is an unusual mélange of styles and ideas. At once informative and poetic, the film features interviews with a few hand experts early on and then settles into a gorgeous montage of various images of the hand at work. There are scenes of monks gesturing with sign language, dancers whose primary movement is in their hands and arms, a group of Italian men in a café gesturing wildly as they opine and one interview with a man who has lost his hand, discussing how his robotic replacement works.

Wormser says he's had the idea to make a film about hands since he graduated from Concordia's film program in 1991. "Yes, it has been difficult to finance. I would shoot piecemeal every time I managed to get a bit of money. Then I put together a 10-minute reel which I showed to NFB producer Kent Martin. He liked it, decided to take a risk and championed the film."

The concept came to Wormser when he came across a classic Indian dance form called Bharata Natyam. "I was fascinated by these dances," he recalls. "Their movements are incredible--watching them is like worshipping the gods. The form is over 2,000 years old. This is where I got the idea to focus on the hand as a film topic."

Since graduating, Wormser also directed seven five-minute experimental dance films called The Three Marias, which he based on Portugese feminist poetry. The films were well received when they aired on both Hungarian and Canadian national TV.

"Technically, Faces of the Hand is a documentary," Wormser says of his ambiguous style. "But much of it is staged and it is quite stylized. In my work I attempt to widen the boundaries between categories of fiction, experimental and documentary. These categories mean nothing to me. Unfortunately, too many of the people who hold power in the film business have a very narrow idea of what cinema should be."

Faces of the Hand has its national premiere this Monday, April 28 at 10 p.m. on Vision TV