Véréna Paravel
-
Trailer Watch: Verena Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor’s De Humani Corporis Fabrica
A squirm-inducing sensation on the festival circuit, Harvard Sensory Lab leaders Lucien Castaing-Tayler and Véréna Paravel’s De Humani Corporis Fabrica has a new trailer ahead of its limited release next month. The film consists of raw medical footage—eye surgery, genital drilling and an assortment of equally unsettling internal procedures—shot between eight different French hospitals. Vadim Rizov covered De Humani during its Cannes premiere last year, writing: …Fabrica toggles between something like Fantastic Voyage and a particularly grody Wiseman documentary. Defamiliarizing images on the former front include a camera being inserted deep inside….whatever (I don’t want to know) that made me wonder why I’ve never […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Mar 24, 2023 -
“We Try Not to Think”: Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor on De Humani Corporis Fabrica
It was only a matter of time before Sensory Ethnography Lab explorers Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor went inside—deep inside. Shot at eight different French hospitals, De Humani Corporis Fabrica intermingles imagery from within and without the human body, observing patients and listening in on surgeons during operations with special cameras and medical equipment. Immersive in different ways from their masterpiece Leviathan, and even more hypnotic than Caniba in aligning the screen’s surface with the textures of tissue, Paravel and Castaing-Taylor’s latest film takes its title from Vesalius’s groundbreaking 16th-century anatomy text, de- and re-familiarizing us with the interiors and […]
by Nicolas Rapold on Jun 3, 2022 -
Cannes 2022: De Humani Corporis Fabrica, Crimes of the Future, Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind, Les Amandiers
The man sitting two seats over had averted his eyes from the screen a few times before he finally hit his breaking point. I saw a penis and a drill of some kind coming right for the urethra and heard a doctor saying that he was going to put the device on the “Kalashnikov setting.” What, I wondered, might that mean? When the drill started pumping away and blood spurted, the poor guy had had enough and exited swiftly, and I absolutely couldn’t blame him. This was the second screening of the instantly infamous De Humani Corporis Fabrica that day; after the […]
by Vadim Rizov on May 25, 2022 -
Hereditary, Horror and the Power of Choice
It was the closing night of the Overlook Film Festival and everyone was gathered at a mansion on the outskirts of town. I was coming out of the bathroom, spooked, because A24 had planted some Hereditary sound effects next to the toilet. Jesus. The film, which comes out today, had closed the festival earlier that night and had left everyone on edge — deliciously so. I grabbed a glass of wine, discussing the experience with a stranger who was leaning against a wall outside next to some friends. Why do we put ourselves through all this? There was a number […]
by Meredith Alloway on Jun 8, 2018 -
Berlin Critic’s Notebook #1: somniloquies, El mar la mar, California Dreams
Some lines from Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor’s somniloquies: “I don’t wanna see your ass, Mrs. Dangerfield.” “Welcome to Midget City. Yes, we built it from the ground up. We have our own police.” “I’ve seen the past. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it! I want the future. The present is squalid!” “Kill the cunt! KILL THE CUNT!!” These are all spoken by Dion McGregor, a musician from New York described in the film’s opening titles as “the world’s most prolific sleep-talker.” Over a period of six years, McGregor’s flatmate recorded hundreds of his elaborate, vividly narrated […]
by Giovanni Marchini Camia on Feb 13, 2017 -
All At Sea
The world of commercial sea fishing is captured in all its stark and violent beauty in LUCIEN CASTAING-TAYLOR and VÉRÉNA PARAVEL’s Leviathan.
by Paul Dallas on Jan 21, 2013 -
The Act of Killing Takes Top Prize at CPH:DOX
The Act of Killing, Joshua Oppenheimer, Christine Cynn and Anonymous’s jaw-dropping tale of war crimes, guilt and moviemaking, took the top prize at CPH:DOX here in Copenhagen Friday night. The film, pictured above, boasts Werner Herzog and Errol Morris as executive producers and follows a group of former death squad leaders as they make Hollywood-style movies based on their murders of communists, ethnic Chinese and intellectuals following Indonesia’s military coup in 1965. Director Edwin (Postcards from the Zoo) presented the award and read the jury’s statement: “The Jury would like to award a film for its ability to show the […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 10, 2012
