Alternate title: Hände: Das Leben und Die Liebe eines zartlichen Geschlechts
Co-makers: Stella Simon and Miklos Bandy. Assisted By Hans Richter
Original format: 35mm silent film 1.33:1
Original music composed and performed by Marc Blitzstein
German intertitles
Courtesy: Cinémathéque française

The use of human hands as characters in a dance inspired narrative are used to explore female experience and representation. By drawing upon experimental traditions found in international art, film, and photography movements of the 1920s, Simon transforms a simple melodramatic love story into an avant-garde feminist short film. -Jennifer Wild

Stella Simon began her formal training in "straight photography" at the Clarence White School of Photography, NYC, in 1923, at the age of 45. While studying filmmaking at Technische Hochschule in Berlin (1926-1929), Simon made her only film, Hände, with Miklos Bandy. Simon later practiced commercial photography and volunteered during WW II. -Jennifer Wild

In the mid-1920s, Marc Blitzstein continued his classical music training with Schoenberg in Berlin, and in Paris with N. Boulanger. His film scores for Hände (1927) and Surf and Seaweed (1931) were composed in close collaboration with the filmmakers. He also worked on Valley Town (1940) and Native Land (1937-41). -Jennifer Wild

Miklos Bándy, a Hungarian writer, was a friend and collaborator of the late Viking Eggeling. -Jean Epstein 1926