Night two at the sold out Fascia Research Congress 3 (FRC3) in Vancouver Canada was considered film night. Delegates were treated to brand new contributions from Jean-Claude Guimberteau, Robert Schleip, Andrejz Plat and Gil Hedley.
French Plastic Surgeon and filmmaker Jean-Claude Guimberteau made his film debut in the US in Boston 2007 when ‘Strolling Under the Skin’ was shown to stunned viewers one lunchtime. He filmed under the skin using high-resolution close-ups. This film showed loose connective tissue, blood vessels, tendons and nerves slipping, sliding and telescoping upon muscle contraction. It’s still considered a classic.
With each successive film exquisite slow motion shots are accompanied by great music ranging from Strauss waltzes to Tchaikovsky’s 1812. And just to keep it even more interesting for the alert listener he uses voice-overs by people who speak exquisite queen’s English, but who every now and then slip in a pronunciation of a word that makes you go ‘what?’ They have got to be French.
Five years later Guimberteau has just produced his fourth film called Muscle Attitudes. I now have a copy of that, plus film #3 called Interior Architectures, which (it says) combines new scenes inspired by film 1 & 2.
Next came a short video clip by Robert Schleip describing his new DVD that promotes ‘Fascia Fitness’. This workout video suggests a fascia-oriented approach to sports and movement therapies. I have it on order, stay tuned.
Another short film by Andrjez Pilat from Poland began artily with a slow-mo solo female dancer with exquisitely undulating arm movements. The dancer’s arms were later overlain with what looked like CGI generated muscle anatomy. Very good to watch. Unfortunately, I have no copy to show.
Despite these fascianating AV renditions the highlight of the evening was Gil Headley’s one-man performance art show outlining proposed changes to the notions of his cult classic, ‘fuzz speech’. Since posting the 5 minute ‘fuzz speech’ on You Tube 3 years ago it has been viewed over 200,000 times. That’s googleviral for a fascia film. My students and me have watched this speech dozens of times and it never fails to make me chuckle.
Gil is renowned for his 6 day dissection workshops, his www.somanautics.com website and his wonderful cadaver video collection.
The central theme of the original ‘fuzz speech’ is that “you can see time in fuzz”, meaning that lack of movement and/or injury will build up restrictive connective tissue, or fuzz, over time between fascial layers.
The revision espoused by Gil on a rainy March evening in Vancouver was pure theater; goofy, sacrilegious, strange, smart, silly and borderline embarrassing. He would rescue the situation with wonderfully original descriptions and videos of body organization and sincerely felt reverence for the donors.
His point was to outline the problem with the old fuzz concept. Seems that in a fresh unembalmed body when you lift superficial fascia from deep fascia and deep fascia from muscle there really isn’t much fuzz, unlike the embalmed cadavers that prompted the original speech. On top of this, he now maintains ‘fuzz is meant to be there’! So, there’s no bad fuzz. And he proposes that the new term should now be ‘filmy fuzz’. You can see a hand held video on You Tube if you search using ‘fuzz speech revision’.
It all reminds me that I’ve not done his dissection workshop for 5 years now. Must get back to work in Boston and save my pennies. There’s nothing like massaging cadavers with Gil looking over your shoulder.
BTW We will shortly be advertising 360NMT’s own film nights. Lots to share.
Cheerio for now,
Stew