De Humani Corporis Fabrica

Pioneering filmmakers Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel, who work at the Harvard Sensory Ethnography Lab and made Leviathan, return with an extraordinary, eye opening new documentary filmed in five Parisian hospitals. Casting an unblinking, anthropological eye over a series of operations and medical procedures, the film reveals the everyday experience of hospital life as it’s never been seen on screen before. Not for the faint hearted, the film does show some explicit details of surgical procedures, but the result is a fascinating exposé of the workings of a vital institution which connects every body.

We were not interested in disorienting the viewer but in trying to install you in some places and reveal later where you were. I don’t know if you knew you were in an urethra before the camera pulls you out of it. So, sometimes we play with this to show you an interior space or territory, where you can get your bearings but don’t know exactly what it is. We allow you to see things you’re not usually used to see, then suddenly the disorientation doesn’t come from being inside, it comes from when you get out. You know where you were—in a head, a urethra, an abdominal cavity.

Co-Director Véréna Paravel, from an interview with Filmmaker magazine.