In \u00c9anna Mac Cana\u2019s probing documentary, two lives are entwined with fascinating results. The seeds for the film were first planted when Mac Cana was diagnosed with Burkitt\u2019s lymphoma, a rare and aggressive cancer; his diaristic videos capture the loneliness of his treatment, spent within the cold, yellow walls of hospital rooms. Through the lens of his digital camera, he occasionally takes in the distant, blurry sight of tower blocks, or his mother cycling to the clinic. The world outside appears impenetrable; all the while, the film reaches beyond what the eyes can see.<\/p>\n
Then, turning to the past, Mac Cana juxtaposes his lived experience of illness with the life story of Denis Burkitt, the trailblazing Irish surgeon after whom Mac Cana\u2019s condition was named. From archival materials as well as interviews with experts and Burkitt\u2019s family, Mac Cana charts the trajectory of the scientist\u2019s career in Africa. Cartography is, in fact, central to Burkitt\u2019s research into the disease: like his father, a keen amateur ornithologist who documented bird migration, Burkitt traced the geographical distribution of the then-unknown paediatric cancer in the continent.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Mac Cana\u2019s stylistic choices become another form of mapping, with Burkitt\u2019s charts and drawings occasionally laid over the film-maker\u2019s own images. The effect resembles a visual tree branch, one that connects the past and the present, the scientific and the personal. Burkitt\u2019s colossal archive of photographs makes for another link, even if the scientist\u2019s colonial gaze gets not much more than a mention. Still, this is far from a work of hagiography: by highlighting some of the more melancholic chapters of Burkitt\u2019s private life, Mac Cana lends a human element to the legacy of a pioneer.<\/p>\n
Burkitt is on True Story from 25 July.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In \u00c9anna Mac Cana\u2019s probing documentary, two lives are entwined with fascinating results. The seeds for the film…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":279466,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3935],"tags":[77,3943,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-279465","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-movies","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114890216877229337","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279465\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/279466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}