NOW ONLINE: five documentaries on the inside perspective of mental health care

Five short documentaries have just gone online here on the inside stories website in the Resource section. Viewers are given access to these five different approaches to documenting first hand testimonies on mental health care. The films have been screened at the BFI, Testimony's exhibitions across the UK, at the Anubhuti Film Festival of Madness and Beyond in India and now online.
 

The Films
 
Visibility Poor, dir. Suryaprabha 2006
One man’s journey back into his past and his heritage, director Suryaprabha recollects his time spent in an asylum and his childhood visits to his grandmother in the same institution in South Wales. A heartfelt account that links personal experience with a wider history, tracing the director’s emotional return to the site of the hospital and his conversations with locals and historians about its story.
 
True Sanctuaries, dir. Joanne Ball 2006
‘True Sanctuaries’ follows a woman returning to the mental hospital where she spent time as a patient for the first time since its closure in 1996. Through the course of her conversations with the director, the film assesses the impact on staff and patients alike of the transformation from care in asylums to Care in the Community.
 
Asylum Seeker, dir. Marie James 2007
A female service user’s experience of different institutions in the late 20th Century is placed in direct comparison with the thoughts of CWM Jacobi in his 1841 essay “On the Construction and Management of Hospitals for the Insane”. Spoken extracts from the text are set against an interview in which the realities of hospital life are recounted.
 
Makers of Modern Asylums, dir. Hannah Chamberlain 2007
Director Hannah Chamberlain meets a group of service users on their way to speak to the architect of a proposed new mental health unit of their local hospital. The film tracks their progress from their planning session through their journey to put their questions to the architect and documents their conclusions from the meeting.

All of Us, dir. Suryaprabha 2007

After researching the accounts of survivors of psychiatric hospitals and asylums Director Suryaprabha used the original footage from the interviews to assemble this compelling video collage on the people behind "mental health".
 
Running time: 30 mins