La devinière (2000) Online

If you are looking for raw material on madness for your film or project, this is a very good documentary to start with. If you are looking for institutionalized forms of madness, look somewhere else, because La Devinière is a good place to be. I have worked in a psychiatric hospital in the beginning of the nineties and though circumstances have improved since the seventies (when my uncle worked there), rarely have I experienced the freedom and simple happiness that I witnessed in this documentary by Benoit Derivaux, as seen last night on Arte. The so-called dangers, as defined by the bourgeousie, are also present: Jean-Claude shows wit, strength, worries, compassion, all bundled behind his enormous beard. I believe that he loves what deserves to be loved, but that he would also be able to hurt whatever deserves to be hurt. Electricity and nudity are two other points of small-minded concern we can see in this work.