Mano Destra (Italian for "right hand") is a 1986 Italian-language Swiss art film written, directed by and starring Cleo Uebelmann. In black and white, Mano Destra is a study of lesbianerotic objectification which depicts a woman tying up another woman in a lengthy act of consensual bondage.
Images from the film were later published in 1988 as part of a book, The Dominas - Mano Destra by the Cleo Uebelmann-Group.[1]
Accolades
In Women and the New German Cinema, Julia Knight describes it as a film which explores the liberating possibilities of sadomasochism, subverting audience expectations of what sadomasochism is like.[2] In New Queer Cinema, B. Ruby Rich described it as "deserving of instant cult status".[3]
In The Pleasure Threshold: Looking at Lesbian Pornography on Film, Cherry Smyth states that its imagery is "beyond sex", and that "like being offered an ice-cold, luscious fruit drink on a hot day, which you are forbidden to taste, this film encapsulates desire as death, as nothingness, and yet utter completeness".[4][5]
Cherry Smyth. The Pleasure Threshold: Looking at Lesbian Pornography on Film. Feminist Review, No. 34, Perverse Politics: Lesbian Issues (Spring, 1990), pp. 152–159 doi:10.2307/1395314