HOSPITAL(ITY) CHRONICLES
49 min, Documentary, Quebec, Canada, 2021Directed byBrigitte Lacasse
Produced byBrigitte Lacasse
LanguagesFrench, English
Through family archives, drawings, animations and performances that draw on her long experience with illness, Brigitte Lacasse takes an incisive, critical look at the Quebec health care system.
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Film details
Synopsis
This is Brigitte Lacasse’s first film: a poetic, autobiographical essay that continues her long reflection on the health care system, begun in 2007 with her performance piece La Femme Saran’wrap. Tapping into her in-depth understanding of illness—her own and that of family members—she examines the sense of individual powerlessness before the medical system and how subjectivity plays into the patient-provider relationship. Through family archives, diaries, medical files, drawings, animations and performances, she takes a long, penetrating look at Québec’s health and social services system and the alternative treatments on offer. The result is a cinematic patchwork that leavens personal trauma with self-mockery as it asks why a holistic, patient-centred approach is not the norm.
Credits
Script : Brigitte Lacasse
Cinematography : Martine Gignac, Philippe Chaumette, Thomy Laporte, Soliel Perreault, Claude Fortin et Brigitte Lacasse
Art direction : Brigitte Lacasse
Editing : Brigitte Lacasse
Editing advisor : Annie Jean
Sound design : Robin Servant
Sound mix : Bruno Bélanger
Music : Les Monocytes (Olivier D’Amours and Brigitte Lacasse)
Sound recording : Frédéric Caron Tremblay, Robin Servant, Brigitte Lacasse
Cast : Brigitte Lacasse, Claude Fortin, Gaspard Fortin, Jean-Marie Lacasse, Katia Fournier, Éric Normand, Catherine Savard-Massicotte
Direction
Brigitte Lacasse
With a bachelor’s degree in multidisciplinary arts from Concordia University, Brigitte Lacasse moves between fiction and documentary, film scores, improvised music, performance art, art direction and cultural mediation. Both scripted and improvised, mixing denunciation with inventiveness and self-mockery, her recent creations are built around social issues that she tackles first and foremost from a personal standpoint.
Her achievements to date include a number of film scores and multidisciplinary happenings, three European musical tours, numerous sound recordings and assorted cultural mediation initiatives. She also produced three fiction features by Claude Fortin as co-director of Les Productions de la petite Gidouille, a company she started with Fortin. Between 2001 and 2006, she helped launch the Rimouski-based artist-run organizations Paralœil, Tour de Bras and Coopérative Paradis. From 2014 to 2021, she worked as a cultural mediator at the Musée régional de Rimouski while making her first film, Hospital(ity) Chronicles. She is currently working on a documentary entitled La Maison; a podcast, Liaisons médicales, that continues her musings on health care; and a music project, Deer Island.
Filmography
As director
-Hospital(ity) Chronicles, 2021, documentary, 49 min.
As producer
-L’Autobiographe amateur, Claude Fortin, 1999, fiction, 116 min.
-100 % Bio, Claude Fortin, 2003, fiction, 101 min.
-Hospital(ity) Chronicles, Brigitte Lacasse, 2021, documentary, 49 min.
As composer (score)
-L’Autobiographe amateur, Claude Fortin, 1999, fiction, 116 min. (collaboration with Mireille Charron)
-TER, segment by Karina Soucy, 2009, documentary, short film
-L’Âme d’un lieu, Nicolas Paquet, 2009, documentary, 30 min.
-La Règle d’or (The Golden Rule), Nicolas Paquet, 2011, documentary, 75 min. (collaboration with Olivier D’Amours)
-Une Pelletée après l’autre, Guillaume Lévesque, 2012, documentary, 41 min.
-Ceux comme la terre (Living Like the Land), Nicolas Paquet, 2014, documentary, 73 min.
-Hospital(ity) Chronicles, Brigitte Lacasse, 2021, documentary, 49 min. (collaboration with Olivier D’Amours)