Event

Crazy Mother (Mere Folle)

Thursday, November 4 at 7:00pm $9 Members: / Public $13 (incl. reception)

In Person: Filmmaker MIEKE BAL

Working from the 1998 novel of the same name by French psychoanalyst Fransoise Davoine, filmmakers
Mieke Bal & Michelle Williams Gamaker have woven a playful, challenging cinematic exploration of
how society views and treats madness. This moving drama begins with a simple but haunting question: If
your mentally ill patient dies, are you to blame? For Dr Franoise Davoine, Parisian psychoanalyst, this
formerly hypothetical issue becomes disturbingly real. However, Bal and Gamaker are uninterested in
creating realistic drama and in a bold twist Dr. Davoine is abducted and put on trial by mediaeval fools and
through the course of one hellish night - across several centuries and countries" must argue her case for
exoneration. As the journey forces Dr. Davoine to question her own life, via a mix of fiction, documentary
and theory, Crazy Mother (Mere Folle) takes the viewer on a one-of-a-kind journey into the minds of the
'mad' and those designated to cure them. France, 2009, 120 min, French with English subtitles
Mieke Bal, a cultural theorist and critic, is Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences Professor (KNAW). She is based
at the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA), University of Amsterdam. Her areas of interest range from biblical
and classical antiquity to 17th century and contemporary art and modern literature, feminism and migratory culture. Her thirty books
include A Mieke Bal Reader (2006), Travelling Concepts in the Humanities (2002) and Narratology (3d edition 2009). Mieke Bal is
also a video-artist, her experimental documentaries on migration include A Thousand and One Days; Colony and the installation
Nothing is Missing. Her work is exhibited internationally.