VTIFF presents:
Film title: De Humani Corporis Fabrica
Details: France | 2022 | Narrative | French with subtitles | 115 mins.
Directors: Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Véréna Paravel
Date: Saturday, March 30, 2024
Time: 3pm-5pm
Place: The Screening Room @VTIFF, 60 Lake Street, 1st Floor, Burlington, VTAdmission: $5 general admission; member benefits do not apply
For info and tickets, click here.
This film is an account of surgical and clinical procedures in a number of Paris hospitals, with extreme, graphic closeups and some deeply disturbing images (see below). Using tiny cameras and amazing medical technology, the filmmakers (and the viewer) plunge into the viscera of the human body, flinching at nothing. That said, it is an utterly fascinating, altogether new way to look at life.
The New York Times: “A phantasmagorical journey… An eye-opening film…. Through these directors’ eyes, these bodies look wondrous and unsettling, macabre and beautiful, and often uncannily unfamiliar. Critic’s Pick!”
The Los Angeles Times: “Extraordinary… digs deep into the human body and opens up landscapes as otherworldly – and harrowing – as any you’re likely to see. The result is a work of purest corporeal poetry… and a remarkably unvarnished, sympathetic portrait of doctors and nurses at work.”
The title comes from anatomist Andreas Vesalius’ groundbreaking study of human anatomy, published in 1543 with incredibly detailed (and, often, very odd) drawings of all aspects of the human body. Just as Vesalius opened the human body to science, so the makers of De Humani Corporis Fabrica open the human body to the cinema.
CONTENT WARNING: Please be aware that De Humani Corporis Fabrica contains graphic documentary footage of surgery and other medical procedures. Viewer discretion is advised.