Hit Him on the Head with a Hard Heavy Hammer departs from the handwritten memoir of the filmmaker’s father and his experience of displacement during wartime. Referring to the notion Thomas Hardy termed ‘The Self-Unseeing’ in his eponymous 1901 poem, the film returns to childhood and the matters that harden us: upbringing, social status, education, labour, and familial bonds. The memoir weaves into the film as both a contemplation on mortality and an illustration of fading memory, reflecting on how we pen our pasts and how they can be re-told.

English spoken

A film constructed based on a game of chance and a collection of encounters in workshops and homes in the city of Rome. Although the protagonists never appear together, they are inextricably bound by their actions – meaning is conveyed through movement and its associated sound, slowly forming a visual exploration of physicality. The Demands of Ordinary Devotion invites a reflection on the process of making, the prospect of motherhood, and uncertainties in creation, balance and composition.