In Praise of Hands
1974 · 27m · Canada
Directed by Donald Winkler
Genres: documentary
Tones: contemplative, tender
Artisans in the Canadian Arctic, Finland, India, Nigeria, Japan, Mexico and Poland practise crafts from stone sculpture and weaving to puppet making, each skill reflecting its culture.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A globe-trotting crafts documentary sounds like public television wallpaper, but Winkler's refusal to exoticize or sentimentalize—just hands, repetition, silence—actually subverts the whole anthropological gaze thing in ways most people won't notice they're experiencing.
This sits perfectly in the lineage of structural documentary and the NFB's humanist tradition, where formal restraint and uncut duration become arguments about attention and dignity; the decision to let artisanship speak without narration is a curatorial statement that's aged into prophecy.
The radical choice here is the sound design—or the absence of it—letting the physical work become its own rhythm and texture, which transforms what could be a slide show into something tactile and almost meditative; you feel the hands before you see them.