De Humani Corporis Fabrica
Véréna Paravel, Lucien Castaing-Taylor / FR, 2022 / 115 min.
In five Paris hospitals, the camera roams not only among the patients, doctors and nurses but also finds its way into the fleshy insides of the human body: into the aortas, blood vessels and brains of people undergoing operations. An extremely physical watching experience.
Five centuries ago, physician and anatomist Andreas Vesalius from the Southern Netherlands mapped out the human body for the first time in his books 'De humani corporis fabrica'. He opened up the human body to the scientific gaze, making him the founding father of modern anatomy. The film De Humani Corporis Fabrica opens up the human body to the cinema.
Our flesh appears as a landscape of unknown forms, which, like all landscapes, subsists only thanks to the attention — by turns benevolent and maleficent — of others. Hospitals emerge not only as spaces of suffering and care, but also as laboratories connecting all the world’s bodies. This film is a hymn to life, and to death.
See also the exhibition in Eye by Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor: specially for their exhibition, they created an eight-screen installation from De Humani Corporis Fabrica.
This is part of
Special screenings
Details
Director
Véréna Paravel, Lucien Castaing-Taylor
Production year
2022
Country
FR
Original title
De Humani Corporis Fabrica
Length
115 min.
Language
French
Subtitles
ENG
Format
DCP
Part of
Paravel & Castaing-Taylor
Eye Filmmuseum presents Cosmic Realism, the first retrospective featuring the works of Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor. Trained as anthropologists, they merge anthropology, documentaries, and visual arts in their craft. The exhibition takes the viewer past seven immersive installations in which the development of the makers can be followed.
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