Thursday, February 5, 2004, 8pm
Jennifer Montgomery in person!
Doctors and their schizophrenic patients live together at Layton House, the therapeutic community at the center of Jennifer Montgomery’s startling study of suffering and idealism. Based on the anti-psychiatry movement and the writings of R.D. Laing, Threads of Belonging is shot in a documentary style but is nevertheless a work of fiction. Montgomery encouraged her actors to improvise as they reenacted actual case histories – indeed, for the filmmaker, “the way actors perform madness and the way real insanity can itself resemble a performance”was a primary strategy. As experimental therapies, power struggles, and the individual arcs of mental illness converge, we see a community struggling to understand itself and determine its destiny (Jim Trainor). 2003, Jennifer Montgomery, USA, 93 min, video.