Our Hands Were Tied
2025
David Stout
Our Hands Were Tied is a common excuse to avoid culpability. The film is an unsettling rumination on the secrets we keep, the traumas we hold and the masks that we wear. The cast of hostages, suffering from ambiguous self-inflicted and societal tortures, are simultaneously rendered as victims, perpetrators and innocents who, try as they might, cannot fully outrun or shed their own judgements, postures or denials.
The film draws inspiration from diverse traditions including Eastern European stop-motion animation, Japanese Butoh, and artist Joseph Beuys’ use of fat as a visceral aesthetic material. None of these artistic references are used in the prompting of AI imagery, other than a variety of qualitative descriptions of lard, butter and fat. Instead, the prompting strategy has focused on emotional resonance and specific gestural evocations much like the director’s work with physical actors and dancers. Similarly, the sample library used to construct the music was also prompted with AI and then sliced into bits and mixed with foley, environmental sound, electronic instruments, and vocal utterances.
