Frederick.Wiseman.1967.Titicut.Follies.DVDRip.XViD-KG.nfo
Not my up, thanks to the uploader, this is their description:
Frederick Wiseman - Titicut Follies (1967)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062374
Plot Outline :
Quote:
Titicut Follies is a black and white 1967 documentary film by
Frederick Wiseman about the treatment of patients at Massachusetts
Correctional Institution in Bridgewater, Massachusetts. The title is
taken from a talent show put on by the hospital's inmates. (The talent
show was taken from the Wampanoag Indian name for the nearby Taunton
River).
Senses of Cinema Review :
Quote:
Time certainly changes the viewing experience of any film, but
especially so in the case of Frederick Wiseman's first documentary,
which editorially chronicles the facilities and the patients at a
state-run treatment center. In the mid-1960s, MCI-Bridgewater held a
wide range of detainees and patients, some deemed “criminally insane”
and others “sexually dangerous”. Despite the sensitive treatment these
inmates required, the center was nevertheless run – at the time – by
the Department of Corrections, not the Department of Mental Health.
(1)
The film's initial production in 1967 quickly brought controversy:
consent procedures were called into question, as were the ethics of
both the first-time filmmaker and his political cronies, and finally,
legal definitions of terms like 'privacy' and 'obscenity' (the State
tried to restrict the film's exhibition based partially on the grounds
that the film showed male frontal nudity). Titicut Follies became at
once a hot topic for newspapers, a useful document for rights
activists (as well as for students of documentary), and a deeply
sensitive issue for the families personally involved.
But now, in 2002, Wiseman has made over 30 films and is generally
regarded to be one of the most unique and stylistically uncompromising
documentary filmmakers. Unaffiliated with any school of filming (or
indeed with any film school), Wiseman has steadfastly pursued a
completely individualized style of production, ranking him with the
great auteurs and filmic innovators in cinema history. Discussions of
Titicut Follies used to be more about the patients – should their
rights of privacy be protected, did Wiseman violate those rights, how
the issue of consent is complicated when competency can't be
established, and so on. Now, with the most pressing legal suits in the
film's past, and with many of the patients pictured now deceased, the
film becomes more our chance to see the seeds of Wiseman's style at
their rawest roots.
Wiseman's camera is deceptively passive, deceptively silent. An
understandable but inappropriate impression is that it merely sits
back and watches. In Titicut Follies, patients are stripped and
humiliated by boorish guards operating under questionable government
policy, and Wiseman's camera keeps rolling. It enters a session
between a doctor interviewing an inmate, who admits to molesting his
own daughter. It takes us inside the morgue as Bridgewater's embalmer
prepares a body for burial. To what degree is Wiseman's camera brave
for recording and presenting events we'll otherwise never see? And to
what degree is it cold, or voyeuristic? Which events does it passively
record, and which does it catalyze?
For instance, a patient named Jim is taunted relentlessly by a guard
abusing his authority. Naked and being led through the halls –
followed by Wiseman's camera – Jim is put further in a position of
inferiority when placed in a barber's chair, loomed over by multiple
officers, shaved roughly (perhaps even being cut purposefully), and
taunted all the way back to his empty cell, bleeding and covering his
genitals. But when the guards finally give out, appearing to leave Jim
alone, Wiseman keeps going. His camera stands in the doorway of Jim's
cell, rolling on, watching, giving Jim no respite, effectively
continuing his harassment while simultaneously exposing it. The viewer
is put in an extremely uncomfortable position, forced to react
multiply to varying stimuli – Jim's disgustingly inappropriate cell,
off-camera guards restarting their psychological torment, Jim's
tantrum in response. Wiseman's camera (by implication, the viewer),
stands at the doorway and watches. When the camera zooms in, it feels
like an attack. Only then, at the very end of the sequence, do we
learn that Jim was a school teacher, bringing his painful story up
front with a powerful immediacy. And lest we think that Wiseman's
camera manhandles his subjects at all times, he's careful to include
the speeches of a patient named Vladimir, who cleverly argues with the
doctor as often as possible on camera, fully aware of the agency he's
being given to plead his own case.
Wiseman's silent camera has never needed a narrator, though, in
presenting institutions that the public would otherwise have never had
access to – for example, the underground training facilities at
Vandenberg Air Force base (where recruits are trained to push 'the
button') in Missile (1987), the workings of a Midwestern police
department in Law and Order (1969), and, most recently, the procedures
inside a women's shelter in Tampa, Florida in Domestic Violence
(2001).
Making private matters public seems to imply a distinct political
agenda, however in 1967, Wiseman was (perhaps above all) an ambitious
artist. Do we then qualify his efforts? The film, after all, which did
help to bring change to the facility, is not a clearly argued social
document, but rather it's structured, dryly, as a musical. It's even
bookended by performances. Patients burst out of their prison-like
confines, perpetually singing and playing instruments and spouting off
semi-comprehensible theories on contemporary domestic and foreign
policy. Wiseman also presents the 'cast of characters' so that we're
not entirely sure at first who's a guard and who's a patient.
Though Wiseman's heavy-handedness is apparent in some episodes of
didactic editing, these one-sided cuts show us the gross and pathetic
effects of bureaucracy at the institution. An old patient, mistreated
to the point where he commits to starve himself to death, is stripped
naked, thoroughly disrespected, and force-fed through the nose with a
rubber tube lubricated with grease (as the doctor's cigarette dangles
precariously above the funnel). Intercut with this sequence, however,
is his death, in which he is given a suit, an embalming, a
processional in a hearse, and a proper coffin burial presided over by
a priest.
But the question with a Wiseman film always is: what emotion do you
feel? Is Wiseman presenting the horror of this man's personal fate or
coldly ruing bureaucratic inefficiency?
User Comments :
Quote:
It is hard to view this film and watch the dehumanization and
brutalization of these patients. They are shown naked being provoked
into angry outbursts by the guards, force-fed, locked in solitary
confinement naked with a metal bucket for a toilet and hundreds of
other indignities. Even the fact that the film-makers had such access
is a shocking violation since patients committed involuntarily are
unable to give informed consent.
But this was made in 1967 before modern anti-psychotic medications
were developed. As a Clinical Social Worker who has worked extensively
with the chronic mentally ill over the last decade, I was shocked to
see how primitive the treatment methods were, even though I was
prepared by my research in graduate school. Tranquilizers were being
prescribed to mitigate the symptoms of paranoia, the psychiatric
interviews with patients included lots of leading questions and they
were treated rudely and dismissively even when the patients were
making some good points about their commitments.
It was obvious that the staff and volunteers were just doing the best
they could, but I have less sympathy for the Hungarian psychiatrist
who at times seemed as disturbed as his patients. The volunteers
running games and parties and shows reminded me of the Friendly
Visitors to the Poor, those well-intentioned 19th C. socialites who
volunteered to sing hymns and read the Christian bible to poor people
in the tenements to "improve" their lives.
All in all, this is a very worthwhile film and highly recommended to
professionals and interested others in the mental health field. Yes,
there are some definite ethical problems in the way this was created,
but as a historical record it is invaluable. I give this 9/10.
Source dvdrip
Rip Specs
File Name .........................................:
Frederick.Wiseman.1967.Titicut.Follies.DVDRip.XViD-KG.avi
File Size (in bytes) ............................: 1,075,097,600 bytes
Runtime ............................................: 1:23:59
Video Codec ...................................: XviD 1.1.2 Final
Frame Size ......................................: 640x480 (AR: 1.333)
FPS .................................................: 23.976
Video Bitrate ...................................: 1508 kb/s
Bits per Pixel ...................................: 0.205 bpp
B-VOP, N-VOP, QPel, GMC.............: [B-VOP], [], [], []
Audio Codec ...................................: 0x2000 (Dolby AC3) AC3
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