Orozco el Embalsamador (2001)
Genre: Documentary / Horror
Duration: 91 minuten
Alternative title: Orozco the Embalmer
Country:
Japan / Colombia
Directed by: Tsurisaki Kiyotaka
Stars: Froilan Orozco
IMDb score:
6,7 (1.074)
Releasedate: 1 January 2001
Orozco el Embalsamador plot
This documentary graphically depicts the last station of a lifetime in a country like Columbia. And the method of an embalmer, Froilan Orozco, which is followed in his daily work.
Reviews & comments
Die Hard,Willis
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- 4005 messages
- 1360 votes
I wrote this about it for someone a while back:
Orozco The Embalmer is a documentary by Tsurisaki Kiyotaka. This director travels all over the world to film death. For this film he is in Columbia, one of the most violent countries in the world. Here he films the last station of a human life, namely embalming. He follows a man who has been an embalmer for years, namely Froilan Orozco.
The film is very graphic as it deals with real corpses, but in addition, unlike many 'death' films, it is a respectful approach and an analytical look at death in a country like Columbia. The film contains many impressive atmospheric images of Columbia: homeless people, corpses on the streets, broken houses, hundreds of kilos of garbage lying on the streets.
Another strong point is Orozco's approach. A man who has embalmed 50,000 corpses himself, and who is also in poor health. The method used there is impressive: the abdomen is cut open, the intestines are taken out, blood is poured out, stuff to stop the rotting process is poured in, intestines are put back in with some pieces of cloth, the body is sewn up, dressed, made up and placed in its coffin. By the way, all this is shown very graphically, so if you can't handle that, this is definitely not a film for you.
The film is gory but also very impressive. A respectful approach to a man who works at the last station in a country where violence and drugs cause many problems on a daily basis.
My favorite Mondo movie ever, and one of my favorite movies.
Translated from Dutch · View original
jordandejong
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- 4774 messages
- 1432 votes
Very grim and also shocking documentary about a Colombian embalmer named Froilan Orozco.
The film is set in a very poor, dirty and also very criminal neighborhood in Colombia. The images of the embalming are very graphic, and certainly not intended for every viewer. I therefore immediately had my doubts about Froilan Orozco. At first you think that only people with a rather sick mind can perform work in which you have to extract intestines, livers, liters of blood and other junk from someone's body. Later this whole idea changed for me. As the film progresses, Orozco actually comes across as a sympathetic man.
In addition to scenes in the room where the embalming takes place, you also get to see a number of scenes from the streets in the dangerous neighborhood. This only makes the film grimmer, because in addition to homeless people and other (scary) people on the street, it seems as if there is a corpse around every corner. This even seems to happen so often that it is the most normal thing in the world for the residents (including the children).
I also found the ending of the film quite sad. After Orozco was still smiling for the camera in the previous scene, he suddenly dies in the next scene. I think the cause was a hernia that he got from lifting and turning the many corpses. In the end, he died because of his own work so.
In total, Orozco embalmed about 50,000 bodies, something you can hardly imagine.
I can't give this film less than 5*. In my opinion the best documentary ever, and it deserves a spot in my top 10.
Does anyone know if this director has made any more documentaries? There is nothing on IMDB.
Translated from Dutch · View original
remorz
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- 2498 messages
- 2752 votes
I intend to depict the love and dignity still left in human beings, after being robbed of everything.
- Tsurisaki Kiyotaka
It is, especially in the midst of all the non-committal film entertainment during the MM Horror challenge, quite sobering, confronting and disturbing to come across a documentary like this.
In an environment where the normalizing effect of drugs, violence, death and decay is rampant, we follow the work of embalmer Orozco, who cuts open, cleans, prepares, sometimes restores, stuffs, sews up, makes up and dresses the recently deceased.
Although inextricably linked to common rituals of death (the desire to say goodbye, the final presentation) and the necessary pragmatism that flows from it, his work is incredibly gruesome to behold. I am referring to both his steady hand that, through repetition, completely devoid of sensitivity, exerts seemingly rather clumsy forces on the lifeless bodies - but also on all the disorderly, pulpy contents of organs and body fluids that emerge from these corpses.
Ultimately, I saw little love and little dignity, so that quote from Kiyotaka at the beginning seems more like a disclaimer of good intentions, while secretly it feels like macabre voyeurism. The film also ends with a somewhat forced homage to the eventually main character himself died, which made the whole thing seem a bit disingenuous to me.
Horror is a luxury, where we can, through a free distance from the actual horror, gape at it and call it entertainment. And even though this documentary is of course not taken from my daily life, the unadorned depiction of tangible lifelessness, entrails and tissue was well something different. Not really entertaining: I really struggled with this at times. Worthwhile nonetheless, but a warning is in order. 2.5*
Translated from Dutch · View original
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