Engaging Hand to Hand with the Moving Image: Serra, Viola and Grandrieux's Radical Gestures

But in confidence I am going to tell you a terrible secret:
I hate cinema except when I shoot,
then you need to know not to be shy with the camera,
using violence, breaking down its defences,
because the camera is a despicable mechanism. What matters is poetry.

Orson Welles interviewed by André Bazin

A hand rhythmically catching a chunk of lead, two female figures approaching each other to embrace in an extreme slow motion, a torso twisting and swirling at the command of someone else’s will: this essay examines these and other gestures in selected contemporary moving image works. The gesture — physical and conceptual, theoretical and technical — accompanies and illuminates old and new forms of the moving image, from early motion experiments to analogue cinema and contemporary digital interfaces.