Austere, meditative, inscrutable, fascinating – Hand Gestures is the kind of documentary that is made all too rarely in this age of spoonfed soundbites and burbling talking heads. This quiet, slow-burning film studies the process by which a bronze sculpture is made, a meticulous series of steps that have barely changed since the sixth century BC.
The setting is the 100-year-old Fonderia Artistica Battaglia in Milan. It’s a shrine to the highly specific skills of the artisans who work there, skills that are passed down through the generations. The walls are stained with decades of splattered wax, used to make the initial sculpture, and the terracotta-hued dust of the sand that makes the carapace into which the molten bronze flows.
There’s a timelessness to these workshops: curled posters on the walls could have been hung there at any point in the last 70 years. The peace and the measured pace of work are antidotes to an accelerated culture.
