A portrait of the human health system, directors Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor (Leviathan, Caniba) continue their ethnographic filmmaking project, reaching unseen depths in human bodies and the health care infrastructure that struggles to maintain them. Revolutionary micro-cameras free the filmmakers to wander through the human body without limit, slithering through intestines and arteries no differently than the hallways and cavities of labyrinthian hospitals. Guided only by the scarce fragments of conversations of doctors and nurses, a picture forms of exhausted doctors, traumatized staff, and an institution crumbling under the magnitude of its work.
Unflinching in its approach, the film is a survey of twin systems, the human body and health care infrastructure, inextricably tied together and unexpectedly similar in structure. The abject horror of open surgery gives way to the abstract beauty of clinical medical imaging, as the film repurposes them to create a harrowingly immersive cinematic experience.
France/USA/Switzerland
2022
In French with English subtitles
Book Tickets
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
The Colour of Pomegranates + The House Is Black
This month's Pantheon screening is a double-bill, Sergei Parajanov's extraordinary evocation of the life and work of C18th Armenian poet Sayat Nova, and, The House is Black (22 min), the only film directed by the great Iranian poet Forugh Farrokhzad.
Left-Handed Girl
Co-written and edited by Sean Baker (Anora), Shi-Ching Tsou's heartwarming solo feature debut follows a single mom in Taipei who is too consumed with her noodle stand to keep tabs on her five-year-old daughter's burgeoning shoplifting habit.
The Librarians
Dispatches from the front line of America's culture wars (and ours too): librarians speak out about the war against ideas, history, freedom of expression and sexual identity, a campaign in which an open mind is the ultimate enemy.
Dawn Pemberton Sings Aretha + Amazing Grace Film Screening
These dates are going to knock your socks off: one of the all-time great concert films, Aretha Franklin performing at the New Bethel Baptist Church in 1972, and Canada's own Queen of Soul, Dawn Pemberton, performing live in Aretha's honour.
Caravaggio
In the latest from Exhibition on Screen, co-directors David Bickerstaff and Phil Grabsky shed light not only on Caravaggio's paintings, but his life, often kept half-hidden in the same chiaroscuro tones he shaded his masterpieces with.
Train Dreams
A lovely, ruminative movie set in the Pacific Northwest in the first half of the last century. Robert (Joel Edgerton) is a lumberjack, a taciturn man who comes to appreciate the life slipping between his fingers.
Credits
Producer
Valentina Novati, Charles Gillibert, Pauline Gygax, Max Karli, Véréna Paravel, Lucien Castaing-Taylor
Cinematography
Véréna Paravel, Lucien Castaing-Taylor
Editor
Véréna Paravel, Lucien Castaing-Taylor
Directors
Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor
Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor collaborate as filmmakers at Harvard University’s Sensory Ethnography Laboratory. Their films and installations have been screened at BAFICI, the Berlinale, CPH:DOX, Toronto International Film Festival, and New York Film Festival. Recently, their work joined the permanent collections of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, the British Museum, and has been exhibited at Tate Modern, Centre Pompidou, and Berlin Kunsthalle. Their film Leviathan (2013) received many awards, including the FIPRESCI Award at Locarno International Film Festival. Their documentary Caniba (2017) won the Special Jury Award at the 74th Venice Film Festival, among other awards.
Filmography: Leviathan (2012); Somniloquies (2017); Caniba (2017)