Patient (short, 2023)

19 minutes, Video, 2023

Director, Writer, Editor, Producer: Lori Felker

Fiction, improv, experimental, doc, hybrid – streaming on NoBudge

Fiction, reality, the private, and the performed overlap on a routine but emotional day at a medical center.

“Epitomizing such practices of empathy….Patient is especially convincing, because of how unsentimental and matter-of-fact it is in its daily staging of queries and reactions between trainee medical professionals

and their assigned “patients.”   –    Susana Bessa, Millenium Film Journal

 

“Humorous and touching … impressively shows how much empathy can be possible in medical treatment,

but also how self-protection eventually limits this empathetic encounter.”

• Hannes Wesselkämper, de

 

International Competition 5 “opened strongly with Lori Felker’s Patient…witty and wise, simple and moving”
–   CJ Johnson, FIPRESCI (the international federation of film critics)

 

“Lori Felker’s beautifully restrained staging of a routine day in the training of medical professionals

unfolds into a meditation on transference, empathy, and performance.”

–  Ben Eastham, e-flux

 

“ In the end, what we’ve seen is an extraordinary hybrid that fails any easy classification. A reconstructed reality which reaches a grander truth? The film is something of a sketchpad for an intended feature-length.”

• Johnathan Marlow, Hammer to Nail

 

“The film directly and obliquely addresses difficult questions within the medical profession, including mental health, but does so with astonishing sensitivity and humanity.”

• Erica Moulton, Golden Badger Award Jury, Wisconsin Film Festival

 

AWARDS:

–        2025 Creative Capital Awardee, for production of the feature film:

Press Release
Lori Felker- Patient Project Page

• 2024 Individual Artists Program Grant, City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE) – for development of the feature film
• Golden Badger Jury Award: 2024 Wisconsin Film Festival
• Best US Narrative: 2024 Drunken Film Festival, Oakland, CA
• Special Jury Mention: 2024 Athens International Film & Video Festival, Ohio
• Nominated, Best Experimental Film: 2024 Cindependent Film Festival, Cincinnati, Ohio
• Nominated, Best Experimental Film: 2023 NewFilmmakers Los Angeles, CA

 

SCREENINGS:

International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, International Competition, Germany – April 29, 2023

Milwaukee Film Festival, Milwaukee, WI – April, 2023

Tabor Film Festival, International Competition, Croatia – July 6-7, 2023

Message to Man, International Competition, St Petersburg, Russia – Oct 20-28, 2023

Short Film Night, University of Paderborn, Paderborn, Germany – Oct 18,2023

Antimatter [Media Art], Victoria, BC, Canada – Oct 20-Nov 25, 2023

Gene Siskel Film Center, “Everyday Life” Chicago, IL – Oct 31, 2023

Uppsala International Short Film Festival, Sweden -Oct 23-29, 2023

Driftless Film Festival, Mineral Point, WI – Nov 1-4, 2023

Light Matter Film Festival, Alfred, NY – Nov 2-5, 2023

Millennium Film Journal Launch Screening, Anthology Film Archives, NY, NY – Nov 15, 2023

Kasseler Dokfest, Kassel, Germany – Nov 14-19, 2023

Camera Obscura Film Festival, Petaluma, CA – Nov 17-19, 2023

NewFilmmakers Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA – Dec 9, 2023 (Nominated: Best Experimental Film)

San Diego Underground Film Festival – January, 2024

Cosmic Rays Film Festival, Chapel Hill, NC – March 2, 2024

Glasgow Short Film Festival, Glasgow, Scotland – March 23, 2024

Wisconsin Film Festival, Madison, WI – April 6, 2024 (Winner: Golden Badger Jury Award)

Athens International Film & Video Festival, Athens, OH – April 10, 2024 (Winner: Special Jury Mention)

Wide Open Experimental Film Festival, Tulsa, OK – April 28, 2024

Chicago Critics Film Festival, Chicago, IL – May 4, 2024

Rooftop Films, Brooklyn, NY – July 19, 2024

DokuFest Int’l Shorts Competition Program, Prizren, Kosovo – August 2-10, 2024

Tallahassee Film Festival, Tallahassee, FL – August 31-September 1, 2024

South Dakota Film Festival, Aberdeen, SD – September 12-15, 2024

Chicago Underground Film Festival, Chicago, IL – September 11-15, 2024

Cindependent Film Festival, Cincinatti, OH – Sept. 19-22, 2024 (Nominated: Best Experimental Film)

Duluth Superior Film Festival, Duluth, MN – October 2-6, 2024

Mental Filmness Film Festival, Chicago IL – October 10-12, 2024

Drunken Film Fest Oakland, Oakland, CA – October 6-11, 2024 (Winner: Best US Narrative Film)

Aesthetica Short Film Festival, York, UK – November 6-10, 2024

Short Film Market of the Clermont-Ferrand Film Festival, “Short Film Market Picks” February 3-6, 2025

Tampere Film Festival, Finland, March 5-9, 2025

Ann Arbor Film Festival, Ann Arbor, MI – March 25-30, 2025

Big Muddy Film Festival, Carbondale, IL – March 27-29, 2025

Cinema Columbus Film Festival, Columbus, OH – April 30-May 4, 2025

Mental Health Warrior Film Festival, Online, May 4th – May 11^th, 2025

Midwest Film Fest – Midwest Roadshow: A New Lens on the Heartland, Aurora, IL June 14^th, 2025

London Experimental Film Festival, June 15^th, 2025

City Lights Film Festival, Aurora, IL September 19, 2025

 

PRESS for PATIENT:
Creative Capital Awardees. Patient, Lori Felker. Creative-capital.org. January, 2025
Sachs, Kat. One the Underground. Chicago Reader. September 18, 2024.
Souter, Collin. Chicago Critics Film Festival, Q&A with Lori Felker & Jack Dunphy. May 2024.
O’Donnell, Liam. Chicago Critics Film Festival Shorts Program 1. Cinepunx.com. May 14, 2024.
Laczwoski, Jim. Chicago Critics Film Festival 2024: Patient. 5 Years. May 7, 2024
Goodman, Ezra. Film Spotlight: Patient. Wide Open Experimental Film Festival. April 2024
Moulton, Erica. Wisconsin Film Festival Program: Golden Badger Award Jury Statements. April 2024
Patient featured on PBS Wisconsin, Director’s Cut: The Wisconsin Film Festival, April 1st, 2024
Press Release. “Wide Open Experimental Film Festival: Highlights.” Oklahoma City Free Press, March 2024.
Sippell, Margeaux. “A Fishmonger’s Sex Pact, a Psychopath, and Too Much Cologne Highlight NFMLA’s
InFocus: Middle Eastern & Arab Cinema Program” MovieMaker Magazine, March 2024.
Marlow, Jonathan. “Hammer to Nail’s Best Films of 2023.” Hammer to Nail, December 2023.
Bessa, Susana. “69^th Oberhausen Kurzfilmtage, Moving Image’s Communal Body.” Millennium Film
Journal, October 2023.
Eastham, Ben. “69^th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen.” e-flux, May 2023.
Johnson, CJ. “A Tour Through Oberhausen’s Programs in the 69^th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen.” FIPRESCI: The international federation of film critics, April 2023.
Wesselkämper, Hannes. “Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen 2023: Die Antwort der Anachronismen.” Critic.de, May
6, 2023.
Schubert, Brianna. “Film Fest Finds: ‘The Milwaukee Show I’: Three highlights from the grab-bag of short
films”, Milwaukee Magazine, April 28, 2023