User Reviews

Radical experimentalism: when this phrase can be accurately attached to your film, it is bound to cause some sort of division between audience members. Some will hail it as a brilliant, symbolic achievement and spend days attempting to decode its layers of meaning and mystery, while others will dismiss it as being petty, pretentious trash. I cannot say I belong in either one of these groups, although i certainly lean towards the former due to my love and enthusiasm towards avant garde film. "T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G" is like the definition of a crazy, abstract type film; it is a work free from any mild sense of plot and instead bombards the viewer with heavy doses of colorful surrealism. The visuals are relentlessly violent in nature and are liable to cause headaches or, for some unfortunate souls, seizures. It's a wild ride in which words are repeated to a point in which they sound like separate phrases all together, and sometimes even lose any real sense of actual speech and just become noises; noises wringing furiously through the listener's baffled ears as their senses are being apologetically assaulted by flashing lights of color and picture that dash across the screen with graceful madness.

It's safe to say that this isn't your ordinary movie.

This movie drove me to fear for my sanity. Do not watch this if you have epilepsy in the family. Strobe effects, a single repeated word for seventeen minutes... reserved for masochists only - and people who are into structuralist freaky stuff. Deeply disturbing. I know this is only going to make you want to watch it even more, but take my word for it - it makes your brain pound at your skull for release.

there are moments in cinematic art when the narrative of the film is subjectively implied and subsequently written by the viewer. while this is common to most structural and lyrical films in the experimental genre, none hits louder than T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G,. an angry and demonic piece that simultaneously lulls you into awareness and hypnotizes you into an emotive overload. a mere description would surely never suffice. but i feel distraught at how difficult it is to view a print of this film. more people should be exposed to this kind of powerful cinema, so if you see a paul sharits retrospective coming up at your local museum or arthouse theater, do your eyes a favor and make the trip. you may not love it as much as i continuously do, but you will not forget this film.

"T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G" is recognized as one of the most important structuralist films ever made, and as such also Paul Sharits's best-known short. At twelve minutes, it manages to be extremely effective for such a short run-time, and significantly different from the filmmaker's other shorts ("N:O:T:H:I:N:G", "Epileptic Seizure Comparison") in one aspect: the audio. Many of these so-called flicker films, particularly Sharits's additions to the Flux Film series, were in lack of using a soundtrack significantly to such an important extent. "Epileptic Seizure Comparison" used sound to as part of the general experience in building atmosphere; "N:O:T:H:I:N:G" barely had any at all and relied more on the strobe component. But in this film, it is used for an even more significant purpose: to add an additional intensity to the experience, and as such make the film powerful in both aspects.

The premise of "T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G" is similar to that of N:O:T:H:I:N:G" in that both utilize animation combined with flickering color frames. The main difference here is that there is more in the way of imagery and fewer color frames. However, only a few different shots are featured as they are flickered with said frames: a man (poet David Franks) with a scissors surrounding his tongue, the same man's face being brutally scratched, and two other indiscernible images. The images of the man are animated in a very rough manner, and switch between positive and negative prints to create an even more intense experience. Overlay the word "destroy" repeated over and over again quickly and a beating sound effect on top of that, and you've got the film.

So what's so special about the aspect of having sound used this way? Simple answer: when the same word is repeated so quickly and consistently, it is hard for the viewer to know what is being said. Everyone hears different things; I knew the word was "destroy" before watching it, but even so my mind sometimes wanted to interpret it as being "this girl". The flicker effect, as always, is stroboscopic to the point where anyone with epilepsy is not advised to watch this, and it becomes even worse when the images switch between positive and negative. As a whole, the filmmaker is clearly toying with the viewer's senses, and in both aspects of video and sound he does this remarkably. An especially significant piece in the structuralist movement; certainly among Paul Sharits's greatest films, not to mention his most intense.