Notes by Winnie Schwaid-Lindner
The Medical Movies on the Web project from the National Library of Medicine contains nearly 7,000 films spanning nearly any medical topic imaginable across decades of time. As the project describes itself, the works are “from public health, surgery, and nursing to cancer, tuberculosis, child development, tropical medicine, personal cleanliness, diet, drugs, alcohol, dental hygiene, mental health, and much more. Some are public education films, some are professional training films, and some were made for scientific or medical research.”
Available on the U.S. National Library of Medicine’s YouTube page, they are often rare and unique works and have garnered over a million views. Created by medical historians Michael Sappol and David Cantor, the project is now run by Sarah Eilers, NLM audiovisual archivist, and Oliver Gaycken, a film historian at the University of Maryland.
The archivist-scholar duo will present a sampling of the collection tied to the symposium’s topic of Love. Eilers and Gaycken’s talk “Love Doctors and Medical Media” looks into this vast NLM collection, curating a subset from the 1970s they call Training Films for Physicians and Psychologists Providing Counseling for Sexual Dysfunction. Bill and Sue: A Co-Therapy Team Approach to Conjoint Sex Counseling (1973) is an intelligible and amusing self-referential training video, portraying two doctors who are acting in a training video about sexual counseling and are role-playing both the doctors and patients in the scenario.
In addition, a series of educational programs titled “Aspects of Sexual Interviewing” were similarly designed for sexual and marital counselors with the goal of, as the narrator Dr. Harold I. Lief says, “increasing your powers of observation and counseling skills.” The “Frigid” Wife (1972) and Anatomy of Sex History: The Wife’s Husband (1973) are fascinating looks at techniques used over the progression of a couple’s counseling, while The Impotent Husband (1972), part of the same series, chronicles a different married twosome. All three films feature a counselor’s frank discussion of the couples’ relationships, followed by Lief’s analysis of portions of the filmed encounters.
These training films from the National Library of Medicine project are at various times thought-provoking, hilarious, and educational — but to our eyes and ears so clearly a record of the 1970s. Sure to be a highlight of the 11th Orphan Film Symposium, the screenings anchor the session called The Subject Is Sex and will be in excellent company with Barbara Miller‘s talk about the Museum of the Moving Image collection of adult movie posters from New York’s Variety Photo Plays Theater, as well as curator Michael Loebenstein’s selection of amateur Super 8 films from the Austrian Filmmuseum.
Note: Due to the nature of the sexual topic and films presented, this portion of the symposium is likely unsuitable for children. Viewer discretion is advised.
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