Film Categories: science/medicine

  • RSVP

    “RSVP” is a lyrical piece which explores the emotions felt by a group of people, some who knew, and some who did not know, a man who has just died. Its approach, however, is unusual: there is almost no dialogue, but rather a central piece of music – “Le Spectre de la Rose” from Berlioz’ Les Nuits d’Eté, performed by Jessye Norman. This piece was requested by the man several weeks before his death; it plays on the radio, ironically, as his lover, Sid, returns home from the funeral. The music forms a link between various people listening to it…

  • Sanctus

    “Sanctus” is a film of the rephotographed moving x-rays originally shot by Dr. James Sibley Watson (‘Fall of the House of Usher,’ 1929) and his colleagues. Making the invisible visible, the film reveals the skeletal structure of the human body as its protection on a polluted planet where immune system disorders proliferate. “In ‘Sanctus,’ Barbara Hammer addresses in a visually and aurally stunning fashion the co-fragility of both human existence and the film emulsion, the raw material onto which she cretes images. She has transformed ‘found footage’ – scientific x-ray films from the 1950s – into a lyrical journey, into…

  • Signal

    A woman patient becomes both the subject and site of an ophthalmologist’s probe. “Signal” parallels an eye examination with semaphore codes to suggest that the modern visualizing technologies used in science and the military have colonized the body and forever changed the boundaries reached, the vision, and the language of the individual self.

  • Sololady

    “Sololady” is about a fifteen-year-old Javanese girl from Solo who comes to Jakarta to sell her herbal medicines. Her herbal recipes, from ancient Chinese, Indian, and Indonesian remedies, are passed on through family lore. The healing power of pharmacopia is enhanced by her cultural image as healer for her patients, showing an Eastern or alternative approach to healing.

  • Between Friends

    Jen Roberts, a young photographer in her mid-twenties, has many friends, a partner she cares about, and a flourishing career. Upon discovering she is HIV positive her world turns upside down. The film addresses the issue of women and AIDS and helps to dispell the myth that AIDS is an exclusively gay disease. The story is open-ended as the central character is brought to a point of decision, leaving viewers primed to question their choice(s) in similar circumstances.

  • 62 Injections

    Get up, shower, shave, coffee, right? How about get up, jab finger, draw blood, give yourself a needle? Again and again … This film presents the daily routine of the film’s director, an insulin-dependent diabetic. The film records his morning regimen of blood sugar testing, needle preparation, and insulin injection, climaxing with a montage of a month’s worth of needles into various sites on his body. Afraid of needles? This won’t hurt a bit.

  • Chloe

    “Unfortunately, not a lot of research has been done on woman-to-woman transmission,” says the Planned Parenthood Counselor. Chloe is a lesbian who discovers that her ex-girlfriend’s ex-lover has tested HIV positive. Chloe is faced with the realization that though she knows the facts about AIDS, she never thought it posed a threat to her. This frightening scenario serves as a wake-up call to lesbians who haven’t thought enough about female-to-female HIV transmission.

  • Neurofeedback

    This film is about the depressive experience and explores visually the mental languages experienced by those who suffer from clinical depression. The film sets out to relate to any person how the experience feels and to what intensity. It is an educational film, an experimental film, and an artistic expression to the world. The silence of suffering is apparent to those who understand the depressed mind. The film embraces the brain and how the two (brain and depression) are a dual mystery to the human condition. For those who sufer, they will feel welcome and embraced, to those who do…

  • Believe

    Using photo-booth animation, two girls try to put together a patchy faith.

  • Cat Swallows Parakeet and Speaks!

    A gothic romp through a crumbling hospital. The last time you saw a tabloid, maybe the headline read “Man Gives Birth to Nine-Pound Baby Girl,” or perhaps, “Melt Fat Away As You Eat Your Favorite Foods!” Taking such absurd claims as its starting point, “Cat Swallows Parakeet and Speaks!” puts the “Arabian Nights” saga through a surreal feminist revision. In the classic tale, a mythical character must tell stories to survive a man who is trying to murder her and all other women. In this version, Scheherazade is a strikingly beautiful model recovering in hospital after an ulcer operation. She…