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Palms

7.9

73

Ratings

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Original title

Ladoniaka

AKA

Palms
Hands

Year

1994

Running time

139 min.

Country

Russia

Director

Artour Aristakisian

Screenwriter

Artour Aristakisian

Cast

Documentary

Cinematography

Artour Aristakisian (B&W)

Producer

Co-production Russia-Moldova;

Russian State Insitute of Cinema (VGIK)

Genre

Documentary | Family Relationships. Experimental Cinema

Synopsis

Acclaimed docudrama that received many international awards. Hands is an innovative film which returns us to the very roots of cinema. Although usually described as docudrama, like any new phenomenon in art it defies clear cut definition. The film delivers an anarchic messianic message, similar to that of the early Christians: "Any authority, any political, social, religious system is detrimental to human freedom. If you want to be free, leave the system even at the price of suffering and deprivation."

There is no soundtrack to Hands except the voice-over of the author, Artur Aristakisyan, who is addressing his yet unborn son. Yet unborn, and most likely "to be scooped out of the womb". Artur offers him a path to salvation, the path of sacred "madness". We do not know whether the son ever existed or whether the extraordinary stories Artur relates, are true. But if they are not, is one capable of inventing them? The film's "heroes" are a woman who has been lying on the ground for forty years, a disabled young man who has promised not to move from his place until the Kingdom of God comes, a dumb simpleton who ran away from an asylum, a man with no legs moving through the sea of people on his trolley, a collector of clothes of the dead, a hunchbacked old woman keeping the head of her beloved hangman in a box, a man living in an attic with birds, a blind family living from begging, an old man collecting a pile of rubbish so that it can reach the sky.

The film seems to achieve the impossible by making one feel spiritually uplifted and enriched despite the tragedy and horror of the stories it relates. Director Artur Aristakisyan says he was always fascinated by beggars. "From childhood I wanted to make a film about them. Even as a child I had a relationship with film as if it were a church. It was a God-given territory upon itself. You can't watch a film without wanting to be saved. It's a meeting with the living light. The light works with you as you work with it. I would like the film to answer the need for community - to show how people are tied together, sometimes paradoxically."

Awards: 1994: Berlin International Film Festival: Wolfgang Staudte Award

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User history

Palms

1994

Artour Aristakisian

7.9

(73)