Quote:
"A closely edited piece composed of out-takes from an aborted industrial documentary, the film [Handtinting] displays many of the characteristics of the structural cinema, which investigated the physical properties of film itself [...]. [Joyce] Wieland reprinted sequences in negative, and employed repetition and looping of images, interspersed with black leader. [...] But Wieland goes further. [...] Rather than the 'arbitrary' or 'meaningless' images of many of the structural films [...] Wieland selects images of disenfranchised Black women which, under her treatment, construct a pre-semiotic examination of social rituals as pure rhythm and deconstruct facial and bodily signs of oppression and resistance. Finally, she imposes over all her personal domestic stamp, bathing the black and white footage in tubs of dye and piercing the celluloid with a sewing needle."
-- Kay Armatage

Source:
Armatage, Kay. "Joyce Wieland, Feminist Documentary, and the Body of the Work." Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory 13, no. 1-2 (1989). (pp. 96-97)