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Released
1999 · FILM

Secret People

The voices of those living in the last remaining leprosy sanatorium, in Carville, Louisiana, USA.

Runtime
59 min
Documentary

Synopsis

Secret People: The Naked Face of Leprosy in America is a 1998 documentary by John Anderson and Laura Harrison that chronicles the stories of patients forced into quarantine at the Carville Leprosarium in Louisiana. The 59-minute film highlights the stigma, discrimination, and forced isolation of hundreds of Americans with Hansen’s disease (leprosy) during the early-to-mid 20th century. Although it has conjured horrific images of society's most feared outcasts ever since Biblical days, leprosy is in fact a mildly communicable disease that has been treatable since the 1940s. "Secret People" recounts the shocking history of this disease in America through the voices of victims who live in the last remaining leprosy sanatorium, in Carville, Louisiana

Credits

Director of Photography

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How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 1

These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.

Why a floor?

This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.

Craft leads on file

Shot by Ferne Pearlstein

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