Talking Hands

TALKING HANDS is a film about a pioneering school for deaf-blind children. Established in 1963 in Zaborsk, north of Moscow, it was known as the "synchrophasotron of the social sciences". Its founder, Marxist philosopher Evald Ilyenkov, claimed, "By studying the brain you will Iearn little of the mind - just as little as you will learn of the nature of money by studying the material properties of the material (gold, silver, or paper) in which the money form is embodied." Or, as one of his deaf-blind students Alexander Suvorov exclaimed: "Who told you we see nothing and hear nothing? We see and hear through the eyes and ears of our friends, all people, the entire human race."