Health Film

Healthy Scepticism collaborators Helmie Stil and project PI Caitjan Gainty have been successful in obtaining funding to make a film related to the healthy scepticism project. From their project proposal:The film will ‘explore two historical quandaries at the same time: first, the project seeks to understand in greater depth what it was that drew clinicians to filmmaking and what their attraction to this device can tell us about medicine in the early 20th century. And second, the project explores filmmaking as itself a potential historical methodology. Following the insight of scholars who have noted that though we privilege language in academia, words are not the only or even sometimes the most important forms of expression employed by historical actors. Words cannot therefore be taken for granted as able to effectively convey the tacit knowledge and intuitions that guide historical acts, nor can they always adequately express the significance of their ‘doing.’ This is indeed what has led to my current quandary in understanding what filmmaking meant to medical practitioners: they don’t, by and large, tell us what film was meant to do, how it functioned, or why it was medically significant. They simply make more films. Re-creating, then, the experience of filmmaking offers a potential way in. In re-creating their process, in producing a film ourselves, we hope to present a historical exposition and analysis, able more faithfully to explain what film meant to early 20th century clinicians.’ The film will be featured in a film festival scheduled for early 2021, and a workshop called the ‘Making and Doing’ workshop will be held in the Department of History at King’s, pandemic permitting.