Cycle
Debates on Psychiatric Deinstitutionalization
Film projection: Titicut Follies, by Frederick Wiseman
Commentary: Fernando Ruivo (FEUC Professor /CES Researcher)
June 15th, 2009, 16:30, CES Seminar Room
Organized within the research project “The deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill”
About the Film
Titicut Follies is a documentary (84 min, in English) by Frederick Wiseman, directed in 1967, in an American psychiatric hospital for patients with criminal background. It portrays the quotidian of those hospitalized in an asylum institution and the relation between them and the institution’s staff. Constituting a magnificent illustration of Goffman’s work on asylum institutions, the film consists of a profound and disturbing observation regarding the universe of a mental institution, which leads us to question the borders between what is normal and what is pathologic. Its exhibition was banned in the United States until 1991.