Preemie

Four young Americans who've each suffered a Traumatic Brain Injury emerge from their comas at a New Jersey medical facility. Their eyes may be open, but now the real challenge for each of the patients, their families, their doctors and their therapists begins. Brain healing isn't predictable, we're told, and certainly is not guaranteed. So with each 'major' step forward that is observed (opening one's eyes, bending a thumb upon command, vocalizing a word, answering a question correctly) comes a sense of jubilant relief and hope from the families of these patients, but as we soon see, the more a patient progresses, the more difficult things can be for all involved. Moments of faith & hope contrast with disappointments & frustrations, moments of confidence with moments of doubt. It's difficult to watch, and unimaginable to have to ever live through.

The daily workins of Austria's Danube Hospital.

At the consulting service for immigrants at the Avicenne Hospital in suburban Paris, we observe the sorrow and powerlessness of the immigrants who come here.

A documentary about the corrupt health care system in The United States who's main goal is to make profit even if it means losing people’s lives. "The more people you deny health insurance the more money we make" is the business model for health care providers in America.

If We Knew is a documentary about paediatricians in an intensive-care unit for newborns. A film about the compassion needed to heal the sick and occasionally needed to hasten the death of a child.

This 1959 documentary short is a frank portrait of the daily operations inside the Montreal General Hospital’s emergency ward.

The small regional hospitals of Vevey, Montreux, Aigle and Monthey are closing in favor of the new, larger, more adapted and more modern hospital in Rennaz. As the construction of the new hospital progresses, emergency physicians Eric and Frédérique tell us about their daily life in the face of illness and death.

Things are busy at the Paris hospital where young psychiatrist Jamal and his colleagues work. The place is run down, the staff are exhausted, budgets are constantly being slashed. You know the story, but you’ve rarely seen it conveyed as engagingly as in ‘On the Edge’, which employs a handheld camera and meaningful, artistic interventions to observe the daily routine at the psychiatric ward. The deeply sympathetic Jamal is an everyday hero with an exemplary, humanistic disposition, for whom the most important prerequisites for mental health – and for a healthy society in general – are good relationships with other people. He puts his philosophy into practice by listening patiently, giving good advice and organising theatre exercises based on Molière. Realism and idealism, however, are in balance for the young doctor, at least as long as the institutional framework holds up.

Kazuo Nishii, renowned editor and photography critic, died in 2001 of stomach cancer. Two months earlier he contacted Naomi Kawase, whose works he admired, to document the remaining weeks of his life. Kawase visits him in the hospital and films the progression of his sickness and the conversations between the two.

The Richardson Olmsted Campus, a former psychiatric center and National Historic Landmark, is seeing new life as it undergoes restoration and adaptation to a modern use.