A lost cat, a giant talkative frog and a tsunami help a bank employee without ambition, his frustrated wife and a schizophrenic accountant to save Tokyo from an earthquake and find a meaning to their lives.
An undercover cop in a not-too-distant future becomes involved with a dangerous new drug and begins to lose his own identity as a result.
Filmmaker Jonathan Caouette's documentary on growing up with his schizophrenic mother -- a mixture of snapshots, Super-8, answering machine messages, video diaries, early short films, and more -- culled from 19 years of his life.
A pickpocket scours the subway at the command of his inner demons, but when a chance encounter with fate brings a long-lost love back into his life, he must defy the voices in his head and choose a righteous path.
In part of the HBO's America Undercover series, this documentary provides an insider's view of mental illness, and the use of psychotropic drugs to alleviate some of its symptoms. Tracks the odyssey of four psychiatric patients, beginning with their arrival at Massachusetts General Hospital and the affiliated Lindemann Center, revealing their personal struggles and inner strength as they enter the world of psychiatric treatment to seek relief from insanity.
Following the Sunnyboys’ enigmatic frontman Jeremy Oxley from the band’s origins, breakthrough success and his subsequent 30-year battle with schizophrenia, The Sunnyboy is one man's inspired story of survival and hope. A meditation on a condition often stigmatised and misunderstood, Kaye Harrison’s documentary buries below the surface of Oxley’s public “identity” to explore his own reality and battle to maintain “self”. Secure in a loving relationship with his partner Mary, Oxley slowly emerges from his solitary torment to join the world we all share. The film follows him as he tentatively unpicks his confused thoughts and feelings about the past with his brother Peter. From his struggle with the physical effects of years spent self-medicating to his hopeful contemplation of a married future and a daring return to the stage, The Sunnyboy is the definitive documentary of Jeremy Oxley's journey from the Sunnyboys and back.
In this horrifyingly modern fairytale lurks an online Boogeyman and two 12-year-old girls who would kill for him. The entrance to the internet quickly leads to its darkest basement. How responsible are our children for what they find there?
A significant number of American children and teenagers - from all social backgrounds - suffer from mental disorders, schizophrenia, autism and emotional problems, leading them to isolation from society while treating their issues in mental health facilities. But there's no end in sight for those young individuals when they face obstacles and mistreatment in inadequate places under the supervision of careless and inexperienced professionals. The documentary follows some of those public mental institutions and another private center dealing with troubled kids and reveals what's wrong with their procedures, and the irreparable harm they cause in those patients.
Jonas Elrod woke up one day with the ability to see and hear angels, demons and ghosts. Filmed over the course of three years, this documentary follows Jonas and his girlfriend as they try to understand the phenomenon.
The life of the Nobel Prize-winning mathematician and schizophrenic John Nash — the inspiration for the feature film A Beautiful Mind — is a powerful exploration of how genius and madness can become intertwined.
The story of the Schofield family, whose daughter January was diagnosed as schizophrenic at five-years old, making her one of only two children to ever receive that diagnosis.
Voices is an award-winning documentary that features the stark and intimate portraits of three very different individuals and their struggle with severe mental illness in America. The stories of Sharon, Thomas and Aaron illuminate the challenges, realities, and often complex emotions and choices that surround people with psychotic mental illness and those who love them.
Alien Boy: The Life and Death of James Chasse is a feature length documentary film about one mans struggle with schizophrenia and the extraordinary brutality that ended his life. It is the story of a city in denial that was forced to face the truth and learn, grow and change as a result. Alien Boy explores issues of impunity, police brutality, and mental illness.
The filmmakers' 21-year-old daughter journeys from locked-down psych wards and diagnostic labels toward expansive worlds of creativity, connection, and greater meaning. Featuring insights from trauma experts and others, the film challenges the widespread idea that mental illness should be understood purely in biological terms, revealing the myriad ways that madness has meaning beyond brain chemistry.
Shows masked mental patients enacting various schizophrenic symptoms as they were understood at the time. A disturbing film that raises questions about the condition and treatment of its subjects. (archive.org) “Abstract: This film describes and demonstrates four types of schizophrenia. Filmed at various New York institutions, it shows patients singly and grouped in large, outside recreational areas. Some patients are blindfolded. Symptoms shown include: social apathy, delusions, hallucinations, hebephrenic reactions, cerea flexibilitas, rigidity, motor stereotypes, posturing, and echopraxia.” (Guide to Mental Health Motion Pictures)
In 1983, the director’s 24-year-old sister developed symptoms of schizophrenia. Her parents couldn’t accept it—refusing to seek treatment for their sick child, they confined her to their house, to the point of even fixing a padlock on the front door to lock her in. Her younger brother, suspicious of his parents’ actions, began filming the family in an effort to openly question them. A family conflict that lasted over twenty years.
THEY HEARD VOICES is a documentary film exploring the Hearing Voices Movement, chronic psychosis, and the schizophrenia label. The film is a series of wide-ranging interviews with voice hearers, medical historians, anthropologists and psychiatrists from Britain and America, presenting different people’s views. Is schizophrenia hard science or an arbitrary, catch-all term with no real meaning? What does it mean for those experiencing psychosis?
The first part of this documentary deals with the Portuguese neurologist António Egas Moniz, Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1949, one of the first surgeons to apply the technique called lobotomy for the treatment of schizophrenia. The second part deals with the everyday life of people with schizophrenia today: behavior and relationships, and treatment for the disease.
Initially airing on HBO's "America Undercover" series, this riveting documentary focuses on three families shattered by the psychiatric disorder of schizophrenia. Subjects "Bob," "Missy" and "Steven" have lived for over a decade with schizophrenia. The film documents the difficult day-to-day existence of both those afflicted with this order and the families searching for answers to their loved ones' suffering. This film also shows the varied and variably successful treatment methods for each of the subjects—one is placed in a group home, one is placed in an institution, and one is cared for at home. The documentary was critically acclaimed for its compassionate treatment of mental illness.
"Video by Bill Etra, early to mid 1970s, perhaps at the WNET TV Lab?"