How the Failure of the Health Care System Inspired ‘The

Filmmaker Elivia Shaw is commonly impressed by areas that act as a microcosm for our bigger cultural points. In the case of “The Clinic,” a finalist on this yr’s ShortRecord Film Festival, she discovered inspiration from a physician who works on Saturdays aboard a dingy bus in Fresno, California, and gives clear needles and free medical care to IV medication customers. She used this setting to shoot the movie as an allegory on the failure of the health-care system.

“I wanted to make a film about the way our health-care system has failed most of us, especially those who are most vulnerable,” Shaw informed TheWrap. “The Clinic” facilities on the work of Dr. Marc Lasher and his volunteers inside a cell clinic who attempt to assist drug addicts with out passing judgment.

“I read about Dr. Lasher in a local paper and saw him as someone taking this issue into his own hands and providing a different kind of treatment because he knew the system wasn’t working for his community,” Shaw mentioned. “The observational shooting in the film is literally me uncovering and learning how he treats patients, how he’s training others to see addiction and what harm reduction really means.”

Although “The Clinic” performs prefer it takes place over a single day, the movie was shot on Saturdays over two months, with Shaw’s objective to get about 20 full affected person tales that have been “unique and different from each other, knowing that I probably needed about five or six to make the film work.”

Shooting inside a confined college bus-sized area got here with challenges, whereas additionally coping with the grim actuality of the circumstances during which the sufferers within the movie have been residing. “For me, the biggest challenge was marrying the camera set-up and shooting style I wanted to the physical and emotional situation I was in,” Shaw mentioned. “On a more theoretical level, the biggest challenge was making a film that wasn’t voyeuristic but had very real access to people’s suffering,” she concluded. “I saw that as my biggest challenge as a filmmaker and part of the reason I wanted to make the film.”

Watch “The Clinic” above. Viewers may also display screen the movies at any time throughout the pageant at Shortlistfilmfestival.com and vote from Aug. 6-19.