PRN films

This is not a film about death. This is not a film about dying.

It’s a film about relationships - between people and their bodies and their families and between a group of medical students and the body they dissect. It’s about facing the inevitability of death and about love, life, mortality and knowledge; all the things that separate us from the animals. Death just happens to be part of the story.

When a donor dies, their body is taken to the medical school and embalmed. Then it is assigned to a group of medical students; each group of ten medical students has their own body, and they gradually dissect it during their anatomy course. Starting with the limbs, they move on to the chest, abdomen and pelvis, then the head, finishing with the brain itself. As the students dissect the body all the pieces are kept, finally they are cremated together and the ashes returned to the family.

This story is a story that few outside the medical profession know, that few have ever seen. It provides the backbone of the film, the physical story and a powerful emotional arc as the family give up the body and have the ashes returned to them several years later. But the film is much more than that. It’s also a film about relationships. Relationships are as crucial to this documentary as they are to any film and these will weave themselves around the physical story.

During the dissection the students learn more than just simple anatomy, they develop a relationship with the body - their first ‘patient’. They learn to confront and accept death; for many it is the first time they have seen a dead body, and they learn to distance themselves from it… essential if they are going to survive a career in medicine. During the course their relationship evolves from fear, to tolerance, to familiarity, and finally respect as they take their first steps on the road to becoming doctors.

The film forces us, the audience to confront our own mortality as our subjects confront theirs. In making the decision to donate their bodies to science they have chosen a certain path. But why did they choose it? Why do people donate their bodies for dissection? Do they really think medical research and education is that important? What do their families think? What do the students and researchers think?

Despite its subject matter this film is not an exploitative gore-fest, it is a sensitive and emotional film looking at the relationship between medical students and the bodies they dissect, at why people choose to donate their bodies and what that means to those they leave behind.

Sure, it will be hard to watch in places… our donors will speak from ‘beyond the grave’ and will almost be looking over the shoulders of the medical students at their own bodies as they are dissected… and we will see their real bodies, really being dissected. Finally as the remains as the bodies are cremated and returned to the families of the donors to be scattered in a favourite spot, our students and researchers will have a chance to address the donor whose generosity has helped them so much. They’ll get to say thank-you. This return, redemption, and closure for the family will provide an incredibly powerful and emotional payoff at the end of the film.

1 x 50 & 1 x 77 min Documentary