Atlas

In 1899, German neurobiologist Christofredo Jakob arrived in Argentina to conduct his research at the Hospital de las Alienadas, an insane asylum for women. More than a century later, in a semi-abandoned ward of what is now the Hospital Moyano, the traces of that experience appear in the form of brains and heads preserved in formaldehyde, stuffed animals and photographs from the patients who inhabited the hospital. Through archive footage and the memories of his granddaughter Cuqui, Atlas reconstructs Jakob’s work in Argentina, invokes the ghosts of that positivist, ambitious and cruel Buenos Aires of 1900 and puts them in front of a more human but also more limited present, with dilapidated buildings that only seem to survive thanks to the tremendous effort of their workers. The expressions of the patients who were photographed one hundred years ago, their disoriented, melancholic gestures and the blurry images, can bring back the footprints of a scientific practice as extraordinary as it was traumatic. (Mar del Plata International Film Festival)