Anatomy 2 (ATOM Study Guide)

Producers Tony Ayres, Michael McMahon and Polly Staniford's three-part documentary series, Anatomy 2, explores questions about sexuality, gender and identity in surprising and sometimes quite confronting ways.

Each of the three episodes – Mind, Eye and Face – is approximately thirty minutes long. The films are quite distinct in subject matter and style and could be screened separately. Anatomy, the 2008 three-part series made by producers Ayres and McMahon, explored aspects of the physical body in contemporary art practice. These films were titled Skin, Heart and Muscle and explored aspects of sexuality, art and identity in similarly inventive and original ways.

Series Synopsis

Each short film – Mind, Eye and Face – looks at how people construct and shape their identity, how the physical manifestations of gender and identity are integral to a complex and changing interior life that is partly a product of a particular society, culture and expectations. The role of the photographer as artist and recorder of how people perceive and present themselves is a linking element in all three films. Representation and transformation are at the heart of Mind, Face and Eye.

Curriculum Links

These three short films would be suitable to screen for senior secondary and tertiary students in the following study areas: Gender Studies, Psychology, Sociology, Philosophy, Health and Personal Development, Cinema and Media Studies, Visual Arts subjects, including Photography. As many of the issues raised in these films relate to how we represent the world and our identity, they could also be useful in senior English classes.

Questions about the boundaries between public and private space, self-expression and how we develop, construct and remake identity could be explored in several of the curriculum areas listed above.

Teachers are advised to preview these films before screening as they deal with sometimes quite confronting issues and there is some strong language.

Each of these films explores the relationship between the filmmaker and their subjects – as collaborators as well as recorders and shapers of the story – the photographer in Eye, the director of Mind and the participation of the writer/director in Face. Short films, like short stories, have a power and intensity that is unlike the more discursive pace of a feature film. The story each short film tells must be very tightly focussed on a single idea, theme or character.