Jaime

The Richardson Olmsted Campus, a former psychiatric center and National Historic Landmark, is seeing new life as it undergoes restoration and adaptation to a modern use.

"You who enter, leave all your hope behind." Själö was Finland's first mental hospital. The hospital opened in 1622. Intended for those suffering leprosy. But Själö hospital also had a secret ward. A house for the insane. The ungodly and mentally ill were deposited here forever and their property fell to the church. In 1889 Själö became a storage area for women with "unbearable insanity".

Things are busy at the Paris hospital where young psychiatrist Jamal and his colleagues work. The place is run down, the staff are exhausted, budgets are constantly being slashed. You know the story, but you’ve rarely seen it conveyed as engagingly as in ‘On the Edge’, which employs a handheld camera and meaningful, artistic interventions to observe the daily routine at the psychiatric ward. The deeply sympathetic Jamal is an everyday hero with an exemplary, humanistic disposition, for whom the most important prerequisites for mental health – and for a healthy society in general – are good relationships with other people. He puts his philosophy into practice by listening patiently, giving good advice and organising theatre exercises based on Molière. Realism and idealism, however, are in balance for the young doctor, at least as long as the institutional framework holds up.

Dialoguing directly with the trilogy of documentaries “Images of the Unconscious”, made between 1983 and 1986 and based on clinical cases and therapies with a humanist approach and artistic expression, conducted by the pioneering psychiatrist Nise da Silveira (1905-1999) – screenwriter of that film –, here is presented, in two parts, an interview with the doctor, a student of Carl Jung and a pioneer in the application of non-violent treatments for psychiatric patients, given to director Leon Hirszman, in 1986. The conversation is divided in two parts: the first, "The emotion of dealing", the second, "The egress".

Hold mig fast. Før jeg forsvinder

In the documentary Nola, we follow the 24 year old Daniëlle and her psychosocial assistance dog. Daniëlle has been struggling with her anxiety disorder for years and has tried many forms of therapy to no avail. Therefore, assistance dog Nola is her last hope for recovery.

L'albero storpio

The concert was recorded with a black-and-white video camera and a single microphone on June 13, 1978.

Maud Nycander has over one and a half years, filmed a psychiatric emergency ward at St. Göran's Hospital in Stockholm.

In 1955, Albert Maysles traveled by motorcycle throughout Russia. During this trip, he shot what was to become his first film, 'Psychiatry in Russia', an unprecedented view into Soviet mental healthcare. Originally televised by the David Garroway Show on NBC-TV in 1956.

A nocturnal journey inside the abandoned spaces of the former Collegno mental hospital. Through the writings from within - the voices of the letters, diaries and testimonies of the internees - the labyrinthine and crumbling rooms come back to life and evoke the painful past of the psychiatric hospital. They tell of the electroshocks and tortures on adults and children carried out by Doctor Giorgio Coda, the "electrician" from Collegno. They tell of the official trial against him for torture and of the proletarian trial that Coda suffered at the hands of a Prima Linea group, led by one of his "patients". Only at dawn, with the story of the closure of the mental hospitals, will we see the light again.

Persone

The owner of a failing circus has to cope with the return of her son after he is released from the psychiatric hospital with complete loss of memory.

A woman who has been institutionalized for 60 years for the "crime" of not conforming to the 1920s image of what a proper young woman should be (in other words, she did what she wanted and didn't care what anyone else thought about it) is finally released to the custody of her family, consisting of her grand-nephew and his family. At first she keeps a self-imposed distance from the relatives, but she soon finds herself coming around to her nephew's wife, a free spirit who is under the thumb of her cold and controlling husband

A detective starts spiraling out of control when a wave of gruesome murders with seemingly similar bizarre circumstances is sweeping Tokyo.

Deputy Sheriff Lou Ford is a pillar of the community in his small west Texas town, patient and apparently thoughtful. Some people think he is a little slow and maybe boring, but that is the worst they say about him. But then nobody knows about what Lou calls his "sickness": He is a brilliant, but disturbed sociopathic sadist.

When 4 American tourists - Sofia, Carl, Belle and Michael - go on a ghost tour, they get much more than they bargained for, when the ghosts of an evil Doctor and his last patient victim trap them in the old abandoned psychiatric ward.

Psychiatric patient Elmeri knows about the existence of a gold treasure in Finnish Lapland, hidden there by his late father who somehow managed to capture it from withdrawing German troops on the last days of WW2. His openly gay nurse helps him escape from the mental institution, and the two men slowly find their way up north to reach the gold. On their way, the odd couple meets a cavalcade of even odder characters.

During a hallucinatory incident, Kristen Parker has her wrists slashed by dream-stalking monster, Freddy Krueger. Her mother, mistaking the wounds for a suicide attempt, sends her to a psychiatric ward, where she joins a group of similarly troubled teens.

After killing a young girl in a hit-and-run accident, a couple is haunted by more than just the memory of their deadly choice.