Hands (Mãos)

Hands, or Mãos as it is in Portuguese, is a seven-minute short film from writer, director and producer Filipe Piteira. It is very much an arthouse film, or if we are to follow the tags on Vimeo, experimental, having as it does no dialogue and no plot to follow.

What we do get is seven minutes of quiet contemplation of hands. In particular we get to see the hands of co-writer, although without dialogue or plot I believe choreographer would be a more accurate description, Maria Leite. We watch as Maria takes a leisurely wander around a derelict building in her bright pink ski jumpsuit. The building is large and empty but with plenty of corridors and small stairways to get lost in. There’s rubble and debris all over the floor, there’s graffiti plastered on every wall, and Maria is interested in taking it all in.

Naturally, most of the focus is not on the building or surroundings at all, but on Maria’s hands. It’s about what she has in her hands, what she does with the things in her hands, how she moves her hands, and what her hands tell her about the reality she is experiencing. A nice, soft score from Aurélien Martin Vieira Lino also accompanies the visuals and builds a throughline from which we can journey with Maria as she explores her world.

As you might expect, there’s not an awful lot else for the viewer in Piteira’s short film, and if you’re not interested in the philosophical contemplation of hands, then there’s really nothing for you at all. There may be something to be said for the things that Maria takes into her hands; a camera, pieces of a mirror, a prism; as each offers a viewpoint or reflection, but it is of course up to the audience what they take away from the visual representations.

The one thing that might give us a clue to Piteira’s motivation is a scene where Maria drags on a vape and blows the smoke onto her hand as she holds it up. The shot becomes dreamy, as colour billows around and a drug induced haziness emerges, signalling that this may well be where and how Piteira got his idea.

Throughout Hands the photography stands up, taking in the light and the shadows in equal amounts and drawing our focus where it needs to go. The idea for the film is to express the hands as the connection between body and soul, and if you really want to believe in it, then Piteira manages this well. However, Hands is not a film you’re likely to see in a cinema or at a festival, but is far more suited to being something short and enjoyable as part of an art installation.