Care – The NECS 2023 Conference in Oslo

The Waldau project team will be at Oslo to discuss the results of its work. The theme of “care” is particularly appropriate for reflecting on the role of useful film in the mental health field. We’ll keep you posted!
Panel “Media and Mental Health” – 23.06.2022 – NECS Conference, Epistemic Media: Atlas, Archive – Bucharest, National University of Theatre and Film – 22–26 June 2022
Chair: Bregt Lameris (Open University)
This panel aims to reflect on the role of (audio)visual media in the construction of mental health-related knowledge and norms. Because it is an epistemic practice that produces discourses on what is normal and what is pathological, it has a central role in social mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion. Therefore, we would like to question the ways in which the audiovisual media participate in drawing the boundaries between mental illness and health and what social, political and ideological issues underlie such processes.
Through various case studies this panel seeks to interrogate the epistemic function of (audio)visual documents related to mental health. We interrogate the conditions that made these objects possible, as well as their scientific and social functions, and their semantic and aesthetic particularities: How do these films portray mental illness, a phenomenon that largely escapes visual perception? What do these films say about disease, patients and doctors and, conversely, what do they reveal about cinema as a tool participating in the construction of the phenomena being observed? Is there a fit or a gap between the formal features of the filmic image and the medical practice in question? What are the principles that guide the choice of filming one clinical case over another? To what extent have these films been considered for preservation in an archive or as part of a larger collection of audiovisual material? How can we present them to present-day audiences? How should these films be viewed, shown and used today? But also how can we work nowadays with images that were not intended for us? How can we solve the ethical problems they raise, since they not only contain sensitive data, but also refer to a state of medical knowledge where the domination of patients was not questioned?
Paper 1. “Archiving madness”. Neurological Film Archives and the Dilemma of Seeing the Invisible Mentally Ill – Katrin Pilz (LBI for Digital History)
Medical research and educational films have recently been rediscovered by archives and scholars in various fields. Many of these film collections fell into oblivion after their usefulness expired, were disposed of, or were stored in the vaults of hospitals and research institutes without proper archival care. Separation from the accompanying materials (production notes, research reports, manuals) further complicated evaluation and appreciation of these collections.
One of the oldest surviving Belgian films preserved in the Cinématèque Royale de Belgique belong to a collection of clinical short films dating back to 1905 and produced by Arthur Van Gehuchten, a neurologist and professor at the Catholic University of Leuven. Van Gehuchten started to film patients with so called ‘maladies nerveuses’ resulting in movement disorders, such as Parkinson’s and Huntington’s. Since uncontrolled movements were difficult to describe in words, neurologists turned to film for research purposes and medical training. In the following decades, other Belgian neurologists used film as a research tool. Their patients and their illnesses are still documented on film and are often shown today in surprising performative formats.
In this paper, I will examine the role and practice of early Belgian neuroscientific films from 1900–1930 from a source-based, multimedia historical perspective. I will discuss the epistemic value of these films, their origins, and challenges of dealing with such medical-film-archives: Where and how have neurological research films resurfaced? What challenges do historians, researchers in various disciplines, and viewers face in screening and viewing these evocative, triggering, disturbing, and difficult-to-classify neurological cases from the past? What should be considered when collecting, preserving, and digitizing this film and content fragile material, (how) should it be made available to audiences for whom it was not originally intended, and how should this unfold for future research and knowledge sharing?
Paper 2. Narrativize Madness and its Cure. The Case of Insulin Coma Therapy in Useful Films (1930-1960) – Mireille Berton (University of Lausanne)
Since the beginning of the twentieth century, neurologists and psychiatrists willing to innovate their practices saw in motion pictures a means of documenting, studying, and archiving patient disorders, with film easily replacing the traditional clinical demonstration. Led by the ideal of mechanical objectivity afforded by the cinematograph, doctors celebrate its epistemic qualities, as films offer ‘sharp’, ‘vivid’, ‘accurate’ and ‘complete’ images of nervous or psychological disorders. However, close observation of these documents also reveals the tendency to stage and narrate the illness, using certain “fictionalizing” procedures to organize a discourse on the role of psychiatry and the psychiatrist.
Based on films devoted to the insulin coma therapy used for patients suffering from schizophrenia, I propose to analyze the issues at stake in the narrativization of madness and its therapy. I will try to provide some answers to the following questions: Do the aesthetic and storytelling techniques used in these films constitute epistemological obstacles to the constitution of medical knowledge? To what extent are they necessary to construct a certain image of psychiatry and the psychiatrist? From these examples, can we identify the principles of a “medical style” that would refer to a “way of doing science”, to use the terms of Jean-François Bert and Jérôme Lamy? (2021: 389-397).
Paper 3. Pandemic and Encephalitis in medical and fiction film (Lorenzo Lorusso, Director of Neurology, A.S.S.T., Merate Lecco)
After a century since the influenza pandemic of 1918, we are living with another global pandemic of a predominant respiratory illness. However, evidence of neurological conditions is arising with COVID-19 and we are seeing a plethora of heterogeneous neurology similar to Encephalitis which has attracted the scientific community. In 1917, Costantin von Economo published the first description of the encefaphalitis lethargica who deduced the existence of distinct centres in the brain for the regulation of sleep and wakefulness. Encephalitis lethargica was observed in various parts of the world between 1915 and 1927 and was a major cause of post-encephalitic Parkinsonism.
The peculiarities of encephalitis were the object of several medical films during the 1920s, a period in which the relatively new medium was regarded with great interest by neurologists and psychiatrists as a means of recording symptoms for both educational and analytic purposes. Encephalitis also was a regular subject for reports in the newspapers and magazines and film of the 1920s. For example, the visual and psychology semiology in the German expressionist film Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (1920) is an indirect allusion to encephalitis, as well as Oliver Sacks’s book Awakenings (1973) with the description of use of drug L-Dopa for the treatment of the Parkinson disorder, also represented in the fictionalized Hollywood version that starred Robin Williams as Malcolm Sayer (1990). Other depictions of Encephalitis in popular media were the Canadian television series ReGenesis (year?) about a reactivation of human retrovirus.
Encephalitis is an expression of motor disease and mental capacities of the brain represented in different media, that shows great similarities to we have seen in the recent pandemic.
Paper 4. Documenting the Undocumentable? The Impact of Documentary Film on the Public Discourse about Mental Illness – Janin Tscheschel (Bonn University)
In its claim to depict reality, the documentary film not only participates in a process of knowledge constitution and circulation about mental illness, but also offers, as Paul Auster once stated elsewhere, “a method for understanding”. In view of the prevalence of mental illness and the persistence of social stigmas, it seems of the greatest academic interest to examine how documentary has been used historically to promote or counteract stigmatization with its representations and its capability of creating and directing a public discourse.
Peter Stastny describes the history of documentary film about mental illness as a history of exploitation and objectification (Let There be Light (USA 1946), Titicut Follies (USA 1967)), which shapes in its further course the gradual empowerment of individuals (Stastny 1998). The paper aims to show how this emancipation runs parallel to the fundamental debate about questions of representation in documentary practice. The objectifying perspective of the observing-registering camera and the film’s speaking about the others change: the objects of cinematic investigation ultimately turn into subjects who give expression to their inner selves (People Say I’m Crazy (USA 2003), Mama is God (Sweden 2014), Life, Animated (USA 2016)) and even sometimes reach for the camera themselves (Dialogues with Madwomen (USA 1993), Tarnation (USA 2003), Schupfen im Kopf (Germany 2010). Thus, the paper will examine the following questions: Which rhetorical and aesthetic strategies do non-fictional films use to approach the subject matter and thereby explore the possibilities of the genre to give expression to inner-psychic processes? Do the films adopt the opposition of normality and deviation or do they problematize this demarcation? In what way do they try to break through common stereotypes and narratives of illness or reinforce them? Do they pursue the goal of changing social patterns of perception through cinematic viewing habits?
Useful Film in (Neuro)Psychiatry Europe, 1900-1950. Update on Current Research – 2-4 March 2022 – UNIL
Wednesday, March 2
13:30 – Welcome and introduction – Mireille Berton (UNIL)
Panel 1 – Filming the Brain: Netherlands and Switzerland – Chair: Lorenzo Lorusso (neurologist & historian)
14:00 – Kimberley Fleuren (U. Hospital of Maastricht) & Peter J. Koehler (neurologist & historian) A Selection of the Magnus-Rademaker Film Collection (1909-1941)
14:30 – Leander Diener (U. of Zurich) Filming the Primitive. Walter Rudolf Hess and the ‘Sign Language of Behavior’, 1927–1951
15:30 – Raphaël Tinguely (UNIL) Ernst Grünthal’s Films at the Waldau. The Case of E.E.G. (1940-1950)
16:00-17:30 – Discussion
Thursday, March 3
Panel 2 – Early Neurocinematography in Europe: Belgium and Spain – Chair: David Cantor (IDES, Buenos Aires)
10:00 – Katrin Pilz (Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Digital Institute, Vienna) Useful – Unseen – Uncanny: Early Neuroscientific Films in Belgium
10:30 – Paula Arantzazu Ruiz Rodríguez (U. of Murcia) Antonio Subirana’s Neurological Films, Remains of the Catalan Neurology Golden Age
11:00-11:30 – Discussion
Panel 3 – Early Neurocinematography in Europe: Belgium and Spain– Chair: Christian Bonah (U. of Strasbourg)
13:30 – Maia Woolner (McGill University) ‘Cinema of the (In)visible’: Jean Comandon’s Neuropsychiatric Films
14:00 – Lorenzo Lorusso (neurologist and historian) Gaetano Rummo (1853-1917). A Pioneer of the Neuro-cinematography in Europe
14.30-15.00: Discussion
Keynote Lecture – Andreas Killen (The City College aof New York/CUNY) – Chair: Mireille Berton (Unil)
15:30-17:00 – The Hypnosis Films of Ludwig Mayer
Friday, March 4
Panel 4 – Collecting, Archiving and Curating Images of Madness – Chair: Simone Venturini (U. of Udine)
9:30 – Angela Saward (Wellcome Collection, London) Medical Film’s Lives and Afterlives: a Case Study of AV Material Held at Wellcome Collection Captured Through a Neurological Lens
10:00 – Katrin Luchsinger (art historian, Zurich) Not a Portrait. Photography in Swiss Psychiatric Institutions around 1900
10:30-11:00 – Discussion
11:30 – Lucas Iliani & Léa Ritter (Cinémathèque Suisse) The Waldau Collection: from Cataloguing to Physical Identification – Chair: Elodie Murtas (UNIL)
12:15-12:45 – Discussion
14.15-16:00 – Round Table: Working on Medical Films: Problems and Methods. Introduction: David Cantor (IDES, Buenos Aires)
Participants: Christian Bonah; Caroline Fournier; Katrin Pilz; Angela Saward; Simone Venturini
16:00-16:30 – Conclusion
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Ces journées sont organisées dans le cadre du projet FNS « Cinéma et (neuro)psychiatrie en Suisse : autour des collections Waldau, 1920-1970 » (2021-2025).
Depuis ses origines, le cinématographe a trouvé de multiples applications dans le champ médical, et en particulier dans les domaines de la psychiatrie, de la neurologie et de la neuropsychiatrie. Avec les chirurgiens, les neurologues et les psychiatres sont aux avant-postes pour mobiliser le médium filmique comme outil d’analyse, de stockage, d’archivage et de transmission du savoir. Pendant longtemps éclipsé par les films éducatifs et sanitaires, les films (neuro)psychiatriques réalisés par les médecins dans le cadre de leur enseignement et de leurs recherches suscitent un intérêt grandissant chez les historiennes et les historiens depuis les années 2000. Plusieurs équipes interdisciplinaires ont conduit des travaux, avec comme objectif non seulement de réhabiliter le film comme source privilégiée pour l’histoire, mais aussi de développer des politiques de sauvegarde de ces documents.
On doit cet intérêt à la découverte de productions que l’on croyait disparues, à l’instar du fonds Magnus-Rademaker. Parmi ces projets, mentionnons les recherches menées en Italie sur la collection Vincenzo Neri ; en Allemagne sur les collections Arthur Simmons et Max Nonne ; en Belgique sur la collection Van Gehuchten ; en Roumanie sur la collection G. Marinescu. Tous ces travaux, et bien d’autres, témoignent de la vitalité d’un champ de recherche qui vise à comprendre le rôle des médias dans les sciences (neuro)psychiatriques, et en particulier du cinéma qui contribue très tôt à modifier l’épistémologie des sciences.

Centrées sur l’étude des films diffusés durant la première moitié du XXe siècle dans les institutions médicales, dans les salles de cours et lors des congrès scientifiques, ces journées d’études ont un triple objectif : faire un état des travaux consacrés aujourd’hui au film utilitaire dans les secteurs de la neurologie et de la psychiatrie ; faire émerger de nouvelles approches ou questions de recherche ; servir de point de départ à la publication d’un ouvrage collectif chez Manchester University Press, collection Society for the Social History of Medicine’s (SSHM). Se focaliser sur la période allant de 1900 à 1950 permet notamment d’observer la variété et la liberté de pratiques, dans une phase précédant les processus d’institutionnalisation du film médical, quand les « neurocinématographistes » s’improvisent volontiers amateurs en cinéma.
Avec le souci de mettre en lumière des pratiques longtemps considérées comme « marginales » au regard à la fois des humanités médicales et de l’histoire du cinéma (et des médias), les contributions retenues couvrent les principaux pays européens où ces films se sont multipliés : France, Italie, Grande-Bretagne, Allemagne, Belgique, Pays-Bas, Espagne, Suisse. L’analyse de groupes de films conservés dans une institution (telle la Wellcome Collection à Londres) ou de collections (rattachées à une personne, une institution, un contexte particulier) permettra de réfléchir aux questions suivantes :
- Quel est l’objectif principal du film : représenter le corps, le cerveau, l’esprit, le comportement du·de la patient·e·s, etc., et cet objectif est-il atteint ?
- Que disent ces films sur le savoir médical et quel est le rôle du médium filmique dans l’élaboration de ce savoir ?
- Sous quelle(s) forme(s) ces films rejouent-ils la dialectique du visible et de l’invisible si centrale au film scientifique ?
- Comment analyser les phénomènes de « remédiation » mis en jeu par des films présentant une ou plusieurs technologies, notamment des images électroniques comme l’E.E.G. ?
- Dans quelle mesure ces films ont-ils recours à des éléments de mise en scène ou en récit, et quelles en sont les répercussions ?
- Que révèlent ces films sur les rapports de pouvoir entre patient·e·s et médecins, et comment retracer l’histoire des premiers si souvent occultée par les seconds ?
- Quelles sont les différences et les points communs entre les photographies de patient·e·s et les films utilitaires, tous deux réalisés dans un contexte clinique ?
- Quelles est la productivité d’une comparaison transnationale et comment cette perspective permet-elle de faire surgir des impensés de la recherche ?
- Comment regarder et analyser des films déterminés par leur caractère éphémère, parfois étrange, souvent déroutant ?
- Quelles sont les difficultés pratiques, méthodologiques et éthiques soulevées par l’étude de ces objets ?
- Comment conserver, archiver, restaurer des films se situant dans un réseau extrêmement dense de savoirs, pratiques, personnes, institutions, etc. ?

Organisation : Mireille Berton, Elodie Murtas, Raphaël Tinguely
Comité scientifique : Andreas Altorfer, Mireille Berton, Christian Bonah, Peter J. Koehler, Lorenzo Lorusso, Simone Venturini
Intervenant·e·s : Dr. Paula Arantzazu Ruiz Rodríguez (Faculté de médecine de l’Université de Castilla-La Mancha) ; Dr. Leander Diener (Département d’Histoire de la médecine de l’Université de Zurich) ; Kimberley Fleuren (résidente en Neurologie à l’Hôpital universitaire de Maastricht) ; Lucas Iliani (Cinémathèque suisse) ; Dr. Peter J. Koehler (neurologue, anciennement rattaché à l’Hôpital universitaire de Maastricht) ; Dr. Lorenzo Lorusso (neurologue et historien, Hôpital San Leopoldo Mandic, Merate) ; Dr. Katrin Luchsinger (historienne de l’art indépendante, Zurich) ; Dr. Katrin Pilz (Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Digital History, Vienne) ; Léa Ritter (Cinémathèque Suisse) ; Angela Saward (Wellcome Collection, Londres) ; Raphaël Tinguely (UNIL) ; Prof. Simone Venturini (Dipartemento di Studi Umanistici e del patrimonio culturale/DIUM de l’Université de Udine) ; Dr. Maia Woolner (Département d’Histoire de l’art de l’Université McGill, Montréal).
Invités spéciaux
- Prof. David Cantor (Instituto de Desarrollo Económico y Social/IDES, Buenos Aires)
- Prof. Andreas Killen (City College and the Graduate Center/CUNY)