His Hands, is a silent psychological thriller written, produced and directed by both Arron Blake and Darius Shu and starring Arron Blake and Philip Brisebois. The film tells the story about two men of different age who come together for the strangest encounter of their lives.
The 13 minute film is built on suspense and is very powerful in its themes and underlying messages. It is a film to make you understand something and then un-understand it only to understand it again. The film was put together by a team of 3. They wanted to prove they could produce a beautiful film with a low budget by only using resources they had. His Hands earns every second of its running time, delivering a visually breathtaking, unconventional arthouse thrills with expressions that could be described as many things — from surreal to hauntingly creepy.
It is an idea started by Arron and Darius to make a silent film which viewers would believe had dialogue. Using the power of sound, music, cinematography and beautiful imagery, they wanted to capture the imagination of their audience for them to make their own mind up as to what they are seeing and getting an understanding of what they had watched.
“It is nice for them to be lying in bed at night thinking, and thinking,” said Arron.
Together with DP Darius Shu, the film offers a stimulating and exhilarating vision of where the world is in the ambers of blue, green hues and showing what a dark and dangerous society they live in. The physical and mental human connection is strongly shown through a deep sense of emotions between the two men with a lot of emphasis on body language and facial expressions to decipher the story. The film has a strong visual language that is consistent throughout and incorporating many symbolic visual poetry in its framing, lighting and composition, that could mean more than what is being shown, a hint to the deeply rooted messages of the film.
“The film surrounds the theme of acceptance, identity and loneliness but we leave a lot to the audience’s imagination and interpretation to the relationship between the two men. It also surrounds the subject of being accepted and being told you’re accepted but in reality, you aren’t,” said Darius.
When making these sort of film in our current generation and time, Arron added that, “There is currently a rise in hate crime due to our present situation in and around the world, being accepted in the world today is huge, more so than it was 10 years ago. This is mainly due to the huge pressures of social media: whether coming out as gay or “different” there is always that worry of not being accepted. We like to think and hope we will be. I always had a fear that when my family knew I was gay they were only pretending to be “fine” with it, but deep down they were thinking different”.
They value that a film does not need to be spelt out for the audience and that is what making films is all about. They spent four days shooting in London and was in post production for over two months with a great post team to create the right feeling and mood for the film. The music dance around both men and immerse the audience in its suspenseful emotional journey creating an atmospheric spiraling nightmare dream soundscape that occasionally rises in a more haunting seductive ecstasy.
“Philip who plays the old man in the film is 72 years old and suffers from osteoporosis in normal life and there was a scene where he had to sit in the bath for 2 hours while filming, covered in plastic. We couldn’t have done it without him,” said Arron.
His Hands will be circulating in international film festivals over the next few months.
To learn more about the film, visit www.instagram.com/hishandsfilm
To watch the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Website: www.facebook.com/hishandsfilm
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