Hands Down
- Walter Gutman |
- 1983 |
- 6 minutes |
- COLOR |
- SILENT
Rental Format(s): 16mm film
The heroine is Mary Lou Harmel who is the dominatrix in CLOTHED IN MUSCLE. I must have made it about the same time - or maybe a year later. Anyway I am dating it from Bob [Cowan]'s title, 1983.
Also featured is a rag doll and my forearm which Mary Lou, in a hand wrestling match, puts down.
It also features my special technique of being lucky with mistakes. In this case I am clear as to what the mistakes were. The camera (since stolen) had a mechanism for opening the lens for focusing and then closing it - if one remembered - so that when the shooting began it was at the f-stop chosen before (or it could be afterwards). But I often forgot - because of old age or excitement. As a result there was decisive over-exposure until I remembered. In this film the pattern of forgetfulness and remembrance of things past forms a type of design or contrapuntalism. If one thinks of the filmmakers not making mistakes but being brilliantly manipulated by extraterrestrial forces then the accident-created design is acceptable as a way of making the visuals exciting.