From Surgipelago, the Beach Surgery encyclopedia
O Procedimento (The Procedure, 2013)
O Procedimento is a Brazilian Cinema Novo-influenced experimental film made in 2013—seven years before the Beach Surgery novel's 2020 publication. Its uncanny structural similarity to the novel has spawned fandom theories of retro-causal adaptation.
The film circulated minimally after SPIFF 2013, disappearing from distribution until 2021, when Surgipelago fandom identified it as a precursor: a two-part narrative about an unnamed nurse and an amnesiac man unable to distinguish injuries from memories, filmed across Bahian deserts and Maranhão beaches. Part One stages thirty-seven shots of surgical instruments arranged on a tray with no surgery occurring. Part Two: a desert drive by radio frequency alone, ending at sunrise with a sword placed in the man's lap.
The original 35mm print is held by ██ (location disputed); a poor-quality VHS copy circulates in fandom. The Incompletion Collective treats the film as evidence for the "past composed by the future" thesis—that the novel's existence causes its precursors retroactively to have existed, a temporal scar tissue.