Trailer
Year
2008
Length
75 min/2×26 min
Director
Christian Beetz
Between Insanity and Beauty
The film follows the story of the Prinzhorn archives and illustrates the inner conflicts of schizophrenic patients and their art.
The collection created by Dr. Hans Prinzhorn is one of the world‘s largest collections of artwork by schizophrenic patients. It revolutionized the blinkered viewpoint of both the psychiatric and art world of the 1920‘s. Artists such as Paul Klee, Jean Dubuffet, Alfred Kubin and Max Ernst were highly inspired by the so-called „insane art“. Soon afterwards, these masters of modern art were found together with parts of the Prinzhorn Collection in the infamous „Degenerate Art“ exhibition organized by the National Socialists.
Later these pieces of art were forgotten, although many artists, such as Salvador Dali or Pablo Picasso, continued to praise this singular collection; likewise, among the Paris Surrealists, the Prinzhorn publication „Bildnerei der Geisteskranken/Artistry of the Mentally Ill“ (1922) was regarded as a Bible.
The film follows the history of this unique collection and delves past the artwork itself and into the inner-worlds of the schizophrenic patients. But the film does not restrict itself to a mere historical analysis; it is as well a step into the present. It accompanies two mentally ill patient-artists and asks the central question of how art and illness are to be defined today.
Written and directed by
Christian Beetz
Camera
Matthias Schellenberg
Stefan Grandinetti
Jörg Jeshel
Sound
Philipp Weigold
Maximilian Preiss
Editor
Lars Späth
Digital Effects
Jan Meyer
Music
Jan Tilman Schade
Line Producer
Arek Gielnik
Producer
Christian Beetz
Science Advisory
Maria Zinfert
Henning Burk
Speaker
Angela Winkler
Thomas Thieme
Commissioning Editor
Kurt Schneider
Martina Zöllner (SWR)
Simone Emmelius (ZDF dokukanal)
Sales & distribution
- Press kit
- Press photos
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„Just in diesem Moment überraschen uns die aus dem Theaterbereich stammenden jungen Regisseure Hans Block und Moritz Riesewieck mit einem erstaunlichen Dokumentarfilm, der seit Monaten Publikum und Kritik auf den wichtigsten Festivals der Welt elektrisiert. Völlig zu Recht: Es ist, als würden einem die Scheuklappen weggerissen, als sähe man das, was sich seit Jahren direkt vor unseren Augen abspielt, zum ersten Mal unverschleiert... eine fesselnde ,Doku noir' mit höchstem Anspruch...Dieser Film müsste an allen Schulen gezeigt werden.“
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
17.05.2018
