Mère Folle (Crazy Mother)

Mère Folle, based on a 1998 novel by French psychoanalyst Françoise Davoine, blends documentary, fiction, and theory to pose the question, if your mentally ill patient dies, are you to blame?

Directors Bal and Gamaker show how Davoine, in the novel, grapples with this question across time and place as she investigates the minds of the "mad" as well as of those who treat them. (120 mins., video)

Cosponsored by Project Narrative, an initiative of Ohio State's Department of English. The film is screened in conjunction with the Project Narrative Symposium on Queer and Feminist Narrative Theory held May 12–14.