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UPCOMING SCREENINGS

US Premiere: BlackStar Film Festival, August 1, 2024 at 3:30 pm, Perelman Theater at Kimmel Center

UK Premiere: Tate Modern, August 7, 2024 at 6:30 pm, Starr Cinema

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SYNOPSIS

DIS-EASE is a feature-length documentary about how we imagine disease, and how that affects what we do when we encounter illness, outbreaks, doctors, treatments, and disability in real life. It dives deep into the weird, wild archives of medical imaging, public health messaging, and pop-culture outbreak narratives to understand how ideas have moved between science, science fiction, and political ideology over the past century.

DIS-EASE is based on seven years of archival research and draws on interviews with 26 activists, journalists, scholars, and physicians. It identifies and breaks down three interrelated paradigms in the history of science and medicine: the “war on disease” popularized by germ theory, which metaphorically links human bodies and national bodies politic as equally threatened by invading alien forces; the white savior dynamic established by colonial medicine and re-inscribed by the neocolonial patterns of global public health; and the idea that individuals are morally responsible to maintain their own health through their individual choices, which often operates at the intersection of ableism, racism, and classism. The film interweaves fictional and nonfictional material to reveal the power of both kinds of outbreak narratives to shape scientific thinking and popular understanding, and the ways in which outbreak narratives from different periods reflect the cultural anxieties of those historical moments.

Why is this important? Simply put, problems described incorrectly will be solved incorrectly. To take one example, the invading germs of the war on disease reflect an outdated scientific paradigm; we now have a much more complex view of the role of microbes in balanced ecosystems, as well as in our own microbiomes. But we still deploy antibiotics in ways determined by that outdated adversarial view, which is leading us inexorably towards a future of total antibiotic resistance. On another front, massive amounts of global health funding continue to be directed towards disease eradication campaigns aimed at bringing malaria and polio to absolute zero – campaigns that have been going on for more than 50 years – even though scientists have repeatedly affirmed that both diseases have animal reservoirs, and thus can never be fully eradicated. What might happen if the same resources currently focused on pesticide spraying and distributing chemically treated malaria nets were instead directed towards building up national health systems, training community health workers, or increasing access to healthy air, water, housing, and food?

DIS-EASE is constructed in ten chapters that are loosely chronological. It begins with the emergence of germ theory in the late 19th century and ends by offering future prescriptions for a healthier world – calls to approach health care from a more holistic, more long-term, less violent, and less anthropocentric perspective. Visually, it moves from microscopic views, to individual patients, communities, national borders, and global outbreaks, ending with the ecosystem views of planetary health. Similarly, the score and sound design move between inner and outer spaces, inspired by the synth-driven scores of mid- to late-20th century science fiction and science documentaries.

Ultimately, DIS-EASE is a provocation to re-think how we define both the “public” and “health” in public health – who is included, what counts as care, and what it means to be sick or well.

For more on the research behind the film, see here.

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STILLS

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SPECS

120 min, color & b/w

Spatialized 5.1 surround mix (theaters), true stereo mix (online)

Shooting format: 4K (Sony, RED, microscopy camera)

Archival footage: 2K, HD and SD scans

Open or closed captions, with sound description

Audio description for the visually impaired

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PARTICIPANTS

Featuring interviews with:

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CONTACTS

Director/producer Mariam Ghani, Indexical Films: mg@mariamghani.com

Executive producer Alysa Nahmias, Ajna Films: alysa@ajnafilms.com

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CREDITS

Directed and produced by Mariam Ghani

Executive Producer: Alysa Nahmias

Consulting Producers: Day Al-Mohamed, Wendy Ettinger

Assistant Producer: Lou Wang-Holborn

Archival Producer: Peter Nauffts

Supervising DP: Adam Hogan

Consulting DP: Nausheen Dadabhoy

East Coast/Southern USA, Macro, and Fluid Dynamics
Cinematography & Sound: Adam Hogan
AC/DIT: Laura Stayton

Los Angeles Unit
Cinematography: Nausheen Dadabhoy
Sound Recordist: Vero Lopez
Driver and Swing: Brandon Phipps

United Kingdom Unit
Cinematography: Benjie Croce
Sound Recordists: Juan Martinez, Darko Mocilnikar
AC: Jamie Gettings, Nathan Webber

Hong Kong Unit
Cinematography: Edwin Lee
Sound/DIT: Fallout Media

Berlin Unit
Cinematography: Tom Costello
AC: Phillip Meise
Sound Recordist: Adam Toy

Additional Cinematography: Mariam Ghani, Alexey Tarasov

Fixer (Rwanda): Joseph Waweru Njata

Assistant to the producer: Li-Ming Hu

Written and edited by Mariam Ghani & Emily Eberhart

Consulting editor: Penny Lane

Assistant editors: Hai-Li Kong, Jess Y. Lee

Editorial assistants: Mira Maxwell, Alexey Tarasov, Medha Ghosh, Jordan Eldridge

Online & archival restoration: Artists Tapes

Colorist: Laura Stayton

Titles & credits: Mariam Ghani

Original score by Qasim Naqvi
Published by Erased Tapes

Music supervisor: Derek McNeill

Sound design: Adam Hogan & Mariam Ghani

Sound engineering & mix: Adam Hogan

Interview research: Juliana Broad
Archival research: Harry Blain, Juliana Broad, Eileen Clancy, Jacob Clary, Emily Eberhart, Mariam Ghani, Floor Grootenhuis, Adrián Gutiérrez, Josh LaMore, Christian Lewis, Mira Maxwell, Peter Nauffts, Dilara O’Neil

Scanning electron microscope video, colorized SEM photographs, and 3D animated imagery of diseases courtesy of Thomas Hope at the Hope Lab, Northwestern University (Ebola, HIV), Anita Mora at the NIH/NIAID (Influenza), and Volker Brinckmann at the Max Planck Institute, Berlin (TB)

Production accountant: A to Zanna Bookkeeping
Production legal: Shades of Gray

Funding provided by the Wellcome Trust, Field of Vision, Educational Foundation of America, the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature

Research support provided by the Wellcome Collection, the Center for the Humanities at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, the New York Public Library, and the New York Academy of Medicine

Additional support provided by Artists Tapes, Experimental Media Arts @ UArk, the Women Make Movies Production Assistance Program, CPH:FORUM, and the Bennington College Provost & Dean’s Faculty Research Grants

Thanks to Ken Arnold, Mary Bassett, Rob Carmichael, Charlotte Cook, Sarah Choi, Eurie Chung, William A. Darity, João Rangel de Almeida, Harkiran Dhindsa, Abbie Doran
, Johanna Fernandez, Kristen Fitzpatrick, Sarah Eilers, Tarek Ghani, Shana Gold, Saisha Grayson, Meghan Hughes, Julia Kaganskiy, Marisa Mazria Katz, Erin Ellen Kelly, Jeff Lee, Beth Pearson, Jayne Raper, Fay Rosenfeld, Mary Ryan, Laura Saladin, Angela Saward, Cleo Silvers, Tereza Simikova, Roddy Schrock, Keith Wilson, Debbie Zimmerman

Very special thanks to Carol Dysinger, Chitra Ganesh, Taylor Hirschberg, Jess Lee, Danielle Olsen, Svati Shah, Sabrina Sholts, and the team at Ryan Lee Gallery