Description
Sanctus is a film of rephotographed moving x-rays, originally shot by Dr. James Sibley Watson and his colleagues. Making the invisible visible, the film reveals the skeletal structure of the human body as it protects the hidden fragility of interior organ systems.
Writes Hammer: "In making Sanctus I was concerned about the contradictory qualities of beauty and danger of the images that were made by radiation. I delighted in the imagery and at the same time I imagined the deleterious effects of the image making on the subjects. This was my dilemma in making the film and continues until today. I rely on the viewers' intuition of a foreboding, a sense of ambivalence, an unsteady non-homogenous emotive state, a not-knowing."
This film was preserved by Electronic Arts Intermix and the Academy Film Archive through the National Film Preservation Foundation's Avant-Garde Masters Grant program and The Film Foundation. Funding provided by the George Lucas Family Foundation. Original X-Ray Footage filmed by James Sibley Watson, M.D., Sydney A. Weinberg, M.D., Stanley M. Rogoff, M.D., Raymond Gramiak, M.D. This Project was Funded in Part by Public Funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, Jerome Foundation, The Western States Regional Media Arts Fellowship Awarded by The Rocky Mountain Film Center, Boulder, Colorado, in a Project Sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts and The American Film Institute. Thanks to: Nancy Watson Dean, Jan-Christopher Horak, The George Eastman House, Collective for Living Cinema. Special Thanks to Florrie Burke. “Sanctus”: A Sound Composition by Neil B. Rolnick.
