Multimedia Collection
These Hands
VHS
45 minutes
PN1997 .T4381 1992
Who would have suspected that a 45 minute documentary about women crushing rocks in a desolate Tanzanian quarry, with no narration or plot, would prove to be one of the most unforgettable experiences of recent African cinema? Flora M'mbugu Schelling's quiet tribute to women at the very bottom of the international economic order deepens into a profound meditation on human labor itself. These Hands will stimulate viewers to rethink the documentary, their role as its consumers and, indeed, as consumers in a global industrial system.
As we watch these women do their back-breaking work, care for their children and sing their workchants, the film deliberately provides no interpretation, no political sloganeering, no sociological analysis. It gives us no easy way to get inside these women's lives, so we are forced to become more aware of our relationships to them. We are powerless to halt the women's suffering and powerless to stop looking on in fascination. Slowly we realize we are as hopelessly enmeshed in this same global economic system of production and consumption as these women. As Liberation put it: "These Hands is an exceptional documentary in both its ethical and aesthetic qualities, a hallucinatory voyage."
Swahili and Kimakonde with English subtitles.
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