Hospital

Frederick Wiseman’s medical procedural steps viewers through the door of a hospital's emergency room, overwhelmed by daily demands.

In the halls of an unnamed American municipal hospital, a team of healthcare professionals respond to patients in a busy and at times chaotic emergency room. An older man arrives deeply concerned he has cancer, a desperate trans teenager seeks welfare and a young man arrives concerned he is going to die from a bad trip. Through an episodic series of encounters with patients, each worker approaches situations with compassion, despite their overwhelming surrounds.

Curator's note
Although the hospital is unnamed throughout the film – except briefly as “Metropolitan” – viewers in the know would have recognised the setting as New York’s Metropolitan Hospital Center. Although the camera mostly focuses on the patients in the hospital, most of whom are marginalised and in life-and-death situations, Hospital places viewers alongside the workers who are not all, but mostly relegated offscreen. Gripping and immersive, to experience Hospital is to be in the hospital.

Hospital received two Emmy awards following its initial broadcast. More recently, the film was included in the Classics section of the 69th Cannes Film Festival. The film also contains the most glorious vomit scene ever caught on film, although sadly there was no award given out for that.