Will Penn examines medical documentary Burkitt with surgical precision
Anyone who has experienced illness, either first-hand or through a loved one, will understand the need to process their lived experience in whatever way they can. The charts and molecules, cures and outcomes, likelihoods or improbabilities, don’t translate easily into day-to-day reality. Mapping them onto the lived experience of illness is an abstract and difficult task—for Éanna Mac Cana, documentary filmmaker, narrator, and survivor of Burkitt’s lymphoma, his response was to engage creatively.
In his ambitious documentary Burkitt, he traces his own uncomfortable relationship with the eponymous Denis Burkitt. The Irish surgeon and his research in the 1960s gave this disease his name. The film is ultimately an exploration of the complexities of legacy—and while it does express an admiration for Burkitt, it isn’t without subtle critiques. Meticulously researched and nuanced, this piece of work balances the abstraction of illness and disempowerment within broader discussions of ethics. As I write this down, it doesn’t sound like a punchy or compelling documentary. Yet the subject matter is unfortunately still relevant today. A contemporary challenge for medical research—when misinformation can spread like wildfire—is narrowing the distance between the medical world and the public. Burkitt is triumphantly accessible and deeply insightful in this regard.
The documentary captures a defining aspect of its namesake visually, through rich drawings that fade in and out of the grainy vintage film from the Burkitt library. They animate what one of Burkitt’s colleagues praises him for—his ability to turn simple clinical observation into medical diagnosis. The story weaves between the past and present with a perspective that is both surgically precise and personally wrenching. For Burkitt, it traces his transformation of his father’s studies on robin distributions into a map of disease incidence in sub-Saharan Africa. For Mac Cana, the focus is deeply personal; his lived experience is framed by a series of changing images that morph from abstraction into photographs. These churning images create intense and disconcerting visual landscapes and are backed by one of the documentary’s strongest aspects—sound. The audio mix breathes emotion into ideas and characters, underpinning the narrative with a steady throb of discomfort and atmosphere.
Burkitt is most searing when it examines Denis Burkitt and Éanna Mac Cana’s shared interest in the photographic image. While both understand cameras as a tool to document their lives, Mac Cana offers critical ethical insight into the creation of images in the colonial world. Burkitt’s beautiful, gold-hued home footage fills our screen. Yet his images raise important questions—did these children consent to having their photos taken in such a way? What does a “medical safari” imply? How was he allowed to administer speculative therapy on a child in his own kitchen? Mac Cana’s creativity ultimately proves the driving force within the film as he flits between his recovery and the archival footage, which he treats with immense care. The latter is impressive—but the former contains film with his mother cycling away that will linger in my mind’s eye for some time.
Ultimately this documentary feels fulfilling in the ways that so many others fail—it doesn’t beat the audience into submission through talking heads and a moralising position. Instead, Burkitt offers a complicated and nuanced visual scape that shifts between continental and personal perspectives, inviting the audience in with their own personal insights.
Burkitt is scheduled to screen at venues across Ireland and the UK in 2025.
