Cerrahpasa is an experimental ethnography about a state run hospital in Istanbul. The film explores the body as a material to work on and the institution as a body deteriorating through the camera moving in between different subjectivities.
Istanbul and Turkey are experiencing a return to religious conservatism, as well as a turn towards financial globalism. This state-run hospital located in one of the oldest neighborhoods of Istanbul will likely soon be replaced by privatized resources. Places like Cerrahpasa Hospital, where everyday life experiences a strange combination of intense drama and dense bureaucracy, silently disappear.
Hospitals are often filmed as symbols of a "total institution" (a la Wiseman and Geyrhalter’s Donauspital), as social critique, and as a special, mysterious zones where it is allowed to look at the human body dissection (like Brakhage’s The Act of Seeing With One’s Own Eyes). While keeping the observational style, this film adds an experiential, spatial exploration of the space.
