Five centuries ago, anatomist André Vésale opened up the human body to science for the first time in history. Today, De Humani Corporis Fabrica opens the human body to the cinema. It reveals that human flesh is an extraordinary landscape that exists only through the gaze and attention of others. As places of care, suffering and hope, hospitals are laboratories that connect every body in the world.
Observing overburdened surgeons and nurses at work and at rest, the film negotiates beauty and horror — as well as life and death — in a manner both cerebral and visceral (even playful and mischievous at times), confronting a reality that many of us naturally try to avoid. Throughout, the audience is reminded of the confines of our own bodies and minds and their eventual, sometimes immediate dysfunction. In a layered portrayal of the human body in relationship to the institutional body, the film emerges as a timely depiction of labour, placing frail and failing anatomy alongside the professionals who must withstand the “godlike” transgressions they perform with their hands — the cutting, severing, violently penetrating — to save lives. (Andreea Picard, Toronto IFF 2022)
Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor are anthropologists at the Sensory Ethnography Lab. Their films deal with the poetics and politics of corporeal and ecological bodies, and include Leviathan, Somniloquies and Caniba. Their films and installations have been screened in prestigious festivals such as AFI, BAFICI, Berlin, CPH:DOX, Locarno, New York, Toronto and Venice Film Festival. Recently, their work joined the permanent collections of the Museum such as the MoMa, the British Museum, and has been exhibited at Tate Modern in London, Withney Museum, Centre Pompidou and Berlin Kunsthalle.
PRODUCERS: Norte Productions, CG Cinéma, Rita Productions, S.E.L