The Pain of Others
Essential Documentaries
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1h 11m
Directed by Penny Lane | 71 mins | 2018
Taking Leslie Jamison’s 2013 Harper’s essay on Morgellons disease as a jumping off point, Penny Lane here assembles clips of YouTube vloggers claiming to suffer from the controversial disease purposefully and with great care. She draws her title from Susan Sontag’s book "Regarding the Pain of Others" (2003): this film too seeks to interrogate mediatized suffering and the limits of our empathy.
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