HANDMADE

Directed by Leslie Thornton

HANDMADE is a film diptych that juxtaposes natural phenomena with technological discovery. Above, we see the chaotic, digitally manipulated streams of a gale-force storm. Below, we see the crafting of a handwoven device made by a physicist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. He is making a sensitive instrument for a massive research project studying antimatter, particles that have the opposite charge of ordinary matter. Yet the complex device we see being built has the simplest of means. “The object itself is a beautiful thing made out of parts from a hardware store,” Thornton notes. These vignettes are interspersed with haunting film recordings of fluid dynamics studies, which chart the unpredictable movement of liquid and sand. [Overview courtesy of MoMA]