World Mental Health Day
October 10th is World Mental Health Day. Now available on OVID is a collection of films exploring a complicated subject. Included are films reflecting historical perspectives like A Captive Feast and The Yellow Wallpaper, films exploring more modern approaches as seen in 12 Days, and documentaries like Orchestrating Change and Latest News from the Cosmos, which allow their subjects to speak for themselves and share their experiences, in all their beauty and complexity.
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A Look at Madness / Captive Feast
Directed by Mario Ruspoli • Documentary • With Dr. François Tosquelles • 1962 • 53 minutes
Ruspoli had a standing interest in isolated and marginal communities, very much on display in films he shot in Lozère, in France’s rugged, unforgiving south. In A LOOK AT MADNESS and CAPTIVE FEAST, it’s pa...
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Eternity Has No Door of Escape
Directed by Arthur Borgnis • Documentary • 2017 • 80 minutes
"Outsider art" challenges established historical categories and transcends artistic movements. A translation of the French term art brut, a phrase coined by the painter and sculptor Jean Dubuffet in the aftermath of World War II, this ...
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12 Days
Directed by Raymond Depardon • Documentary • 2017 • 87 minutes
Every year in France, 92,000 people are placed under psychiatric care without their consent. 12 DAYS focuses on those who have been involuntarily remanded to a mental hospital, and more specifically documents the hearings that, accor...
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Liberation: The User's Guide
Directed by Alexander Kuznetsov • Documentary • 2016 • 80 minutes
In Sibera, Russia, 18-year-old girls Julia, Ina, Olga and Katia are transferred directly from orphanages to neuropsychiatric institutions and are deprived of their rights as citizens: no freedom, no work, and no family. On the bas...
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SPK Complex
Directed by Gerd Kroske • Documentary • 2018 • 111 minutes
In 1970, Dr. Wolfgang Huber and a group of patients founded the anti-psychiatric "Socialist Patient's Collective" in Heidelberg. Controversial therapy methods, political demands, and a massive interest in the movement from patients deepl...
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Dream Deceivers
Directed by David Van Taylor • Documentary • With James Vance, Ray Belknap, Phyllis Vance, Rob Halford, K.K. Downing, Ian Hill, Glenm Tipton, Scott Travis • 1991 • 58 minutes
Two young men shoot themselves in a churchyard. Ray Belknap dies; James Vance - severely disfigured - survives. Their par...
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The Yellow Wallpaper
Directed by Marie Ashton • Drama • With Sigrid Wurschmidt, Tom Dahlgren, Susan Lynch • 1989 • 14 minutes
This short dramatic film brings to life the classic Charlotte Perkins Gilman story of the same name, which has become an important addition to American literature course curricula. Set in the...
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Elena
Directed by Petra Costa • Documentary • With Petra Costa, Elena Andrade • 2012 • 80 minutes
Elena, a young Brazilian woman, travels to New York with the same dream as her mother, to become a movie actress. She leaves behind her childhood spent in hiding during the years of the military dictators...
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Cul de Sac: A Suburban War Story
Directed by Garrett Scott • Documentary • 2001 • 57 minutes
In May 1995, Shawn Nelson, a 35 year-old plumber from Clairemont, California, emerged from an eighteen foot mine shaft he had dug beneath his backyard in search for gold. An ex-soldier and methamphetamine abuser, he stole a tank from a ...
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Latest News from the Cosmos
Directed by Julie Bertuccelli • Documentary • 2016 • 85 minutes
Despite being nearly 30, Helene still looks like a teenager. She writes powerful, physical texts with a caustic humour. As she herself says, she was part of a 'miscalibrated batch that doesn't fit in anywhere.' A visionary author, t...
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The Mad Masters (Jean Rouch)
Directed by Jean Rouch • Documentary • 1955 • 28 minutes
The film opens on the bustling streets of Accra, the capital of the Gold Coast (modern-day Ghana), a major colonial port city that serves as a stage for the collision of the traditional and the modern. Among the diverse groups who populate...
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Shyness
Directed by Les Drew • Animation • 1996 • 9 minutes
This animated short is a parody of the Frankenstein story. Dr. Frankenstein creates a monster only to find out that his creation is too shy to go out and frighten anyone. The good doctor and his malevolent assistant Trevor try to find ways of h...
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Away from Meaning (Lejos del sentido)
Directed by Olivia Luengas • Documentary • 2020 • 88 minutes
When Liliana was three years old, she suffered from viral encephalitis. As a consequence, she began to experience borderline personality disorder years later. Along with her family, she devotes herself to managing and coping with emoti...
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Orchestrating Change
Directed by Margie Friedman, Barbara Multer-Wellin • Documentary • 2021 • 85 minutes
ORCHESTRATING CHANGE is the feature- length documentary film that tells the inspiring story of Me2/Orchestra, the only orchestra in the world created by and for people living with mental illness and those who su...
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Service: When Women Come Marching Home
Directed by Marcia Rock, Patricia Lee Stotter • Documentary • 55 minutes
Women make up 15 percent of today's military. That number is expected to double in 10 years. SERVICE highlights the resourcefulness of seven amazing women who represent the first wave of mothers, daughters and sisters retur...
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The Providers
Directed by Anna Moot-Levin, Laura Green • Documentary • 2019 • 82 minutes
Set against the backdrop of the physician shortage and opioid epidemic in rural America, THE PROVIDERS follows three healthcare providers in northern New Mexico. They work at El Centro, a group of safety-net clinics that ...
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Prisoner of Her Past
Directed by Gordon Quinn • Documentary • With Sonia Reich,
Howard Reich • 2010 • 57 minutesImagine surviving a war, earthquake, flood, or other disaster only to be stricken by nightmares, paranoia and a very real sense that it's happening over and over. What would you do? Frightening events can...
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Psychology and the New Heroism
Directed by Bill Roller • Documentary • 2013 • 87 minutes
Philip Zimbardo is professor emeritus of psychology at Stanford University and creator of the renowned Stanford Prison Experiment. Daniel Ellsberg served in the Pentagon under Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and is best known as the ...