De Humani Corporis Fabrica

Five centuries ago, anatomist André Vésale opened up the human body to science for the first time in history. Today, De Humani Corporis Fabrica opens the human body to the cinema.

This boundary-pushing film from Verena Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor reveals that human flesh is an extraordinary landscape that exists only through the gaze and attention of others. As places of care, suffering and hope, hospitals are laboratories that connect every body in the world.

Verena Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor collaborate as filmmakers at the Sensory Ethnography Laboratory, Harvard University. Their films and installations have been screened in prestigious festivals such as AFI, BAFICI, Berlin, CPH:DOX, Locarno, New York, Toronto, and Venice. Recently, their work joined the permanent collections of museums such as MoMa and the British Museum, and has been exhibited at Tate Modern in London, Whitney Museum, Centre Pompidou, and Berlin Kunsthalle.

Part of our French Film Festival, supported by the Albertine Cinematheque, a program of FACE Foundation and Villa Albertine, with support from the CNC / Centre National du Cinema, and SACEM / Fonds Culturel Franco-Américain.

“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!” — Nicolas Rapold, The New York 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." — Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times

Film website: grasshopperfilm.com/film/de-humani-corporis-fabrica

In French with English subtitles