The Cleanest Hands
Amy Bailey (director, writer, voice)
Country: USA
“Mental illness is the subject of this highly personal video, though the piece never speaks its clinical name. Instead, the voice of the film-maker describes her first-hand experience in a much more relatable way. Obliquely, we come to understand the harsh conditions of early life that have given rise to it, and to feel compassion for the woman’s plight. The overall treatment is inventive, making ironic and well-edited use of an archived instructional film from the 1950s. That era in cultural memory was itself repressive and psychologically damaging on a grand scale, so it seems astute to have juxtaposed that element with such human closeness in the woman’s voice and poetry. The video rises far above its modest technical resources, which in fact make it all the more powerful. ” – Marie Craven
Amy Bailey is pursuing an MFA at Miami University where she serves as Oxford Magazine‘s nonfiction editor and won the Jordan-Goodman Award in creative nonfiction. She received her BA from Kent State University in journalism and mass communication and spent many years in the south working in television news and magazine production before returning to Ohio. Her work has appeared most recently in Aquifer. Other pieces have appeared in PMS: Poem Memoir Story (now known as NELLE), Blotterature, Voicemail Poems, and Revolution House, among others. You can find her on Instagram @starving4words.
