La porta aperta (1968)

Plot Summary

The documentary, which begins with a sentence by Primo Levi on the condition of internees, tells the Italian mental hospital situation during Franco Basaglia's first experiments. The initial images, shot in the Psychiatric Hospital of Gorizia, show a series of patients in the hospital garden. Dazed and apathetic patients (especially photos). A patient is blocked by two health workers in a straitjacket. A patient is resumed who constantly repeats the gesture of rubbing his hands. A roundup follows on nets, doors and bars that close the mental hospitals. In other effective images some workers break down the fences and the networks that delimit the hospital. Followed by interviews with nursing home staff and a nurse. Pictures of the sick flow as they walk, work and stop at the bar. The documentary ends with the shooting of some moments of a daily general assembly in an asylum.

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