Sync Touch
- Barbara Hammer |
- 1981 |
- 12 minutes |
- COLOR |
- SOUND
Rental Format(s): 16mm film
A lesbian/feminist aesthetic proposing the connection between touch and sight to be the basis for a "new cinema." The film explores the tactile child nature within the adult woman filmmaker, the connection between sexuality and filmmaking, and the scientific analysis of the sense of touch.
"At the opening we are listening to an 'expert' speaking - someone who knows about touch and erogenous zones, about the erotic - yet the emphasis is on her 'knowing' and what she knows 'about' rather than on her 'experiencing.' Hammer undercuts the monologue with intense and extraordinary close-ups of areas of the woman's face and neck, her teeth and lips, her ears. The viewer becomes so absorbed in the details of this closeness, the closeness of a lover seeing the face of her friend, that the words become lost in feeling and experiencing the closeness itself. The other way this works is to make the viewer want to touch, to become involved for, as the speaker says, touch precedes sight in the new-born child, and sight becomes a connection between the actual touch and understanding what it means."
- Cath Dunsford, Alternative Cinema