(De)Institutionalisation

This chapter takes a comparative look at how various documentary filmmakers engaged with both the Basaglian “revolution” in Italy, which campaigned for the abolition of psychiatric hospitals and the managed reintegration of patients back into their communities, and the work of the institutional psychotherapy movement in France. In particular, the chapter discusses San Clemente—a film that offers important insights into the scale of Franco Basaglia’s task, and Depardon’s own troubled relationship with the documentary and photographic representation of psychiatric patients and environments. In relation to institutional psychotherapy, the chapter analyses Mario Ruspoli’s A Look at Madness (1962), and its relationship to figures such as François Tosquelles at the psychiatric hospital at Saint-Alban, Lozère. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the Clinic at La Borde, and the films made about it, notably Nicolas Philibert’s Every Little Thing (1996).