Hands on Film

Hands on Film is a comprehensive study of the representations and on-screen uses of the human limb, spanning the history of the cinema from its birth to contemporary times. It examines how filmmakers have framed the hand for a variety of effects, from stylistic to thematic, and for the development of characterisation and narrative. The book offers insights into how films have created meaning by focusing on that part of the anatomy and, in turn, proposes a variety of ways in which its on-screen appearances might shed light on what it means to be sentient, cultured, and creative beings in the world.

Barry Monahan lectures in the Department of Film & Screen Media at University College Cork. He researches and has published in Irish and other national cinemas from historical, theoretical, and aesthetic perspectives. His monographs include Ireland's Theatre on Film: Style, Stories and the National Stage on Screen (Irish Academic Press, 2009), and The Films of Lenny Abrahamson: a filmmaking of philosophy, published by Bloomsbury in 2018.

List of Images, Acknowledgements, Introduction, 1. Themes - The Framed Hand and Being, Natural and Supernatural Phenomena: Matter Becoming Consciousness, The Nature and Origin of Creativity, Determinism and Free Will: Possession, Self-possession, Dispossession, Modernism: Industrialisation and Technology, Gendered Hands, 2. Symbolism - The Semiotic Hand, The Meaningful Hand and Metonymy, The Manual as Metaphorical, Between Metaphor and Metonym: The Hand and Memory, 3. Aesthetics - The Stylised Hand: Beauty, Ugliness, Genre, Behind the Scenes: Unseen Creative Hands, The Stylised Hand on Screen, The Camp Hand and the Hand in Camp, The Haptic Experience: Screened Sensations, 4. Narration - Hands Doing and Being, Hands as Narrative Actants, Slow Hands and Slow Cinema, Acting Hands and Set Pieces, 5. Characterisation - Hands and Identity, Cultural Contexts for Creative and Destructive Personalities, The Psychopathic Hand, Vocational Hands, Characters and Labour, Manual Details: Emotions and Eccentricities, Concealing and Revealing Characters, Concluding Case Study - Steven Spielberg's Jaws (1975), Filmography, Index.