What are the limits of our sanity? What defines us as normal? "The madness among us" takes a look at the runners and grids from a psychiatric hospital, looking for characters and stories that reveal the boundaries of what is considered crazy. Primarily through female characters, the documentary of Fernanda Vereilles exudes the reason of contradictions, making us reflect on our own conflicts, desires and errors.
Why you chose this topic? Why speak of a mental institution in Bahia?
Fernanda Vareilles: Actually I was introduced to the book by Marcelo Veras, a psychoanalyst of Salvador. He wrote a book about his experience as director of a hospital Juliano Moreira I read that book spoke to me, I made a suggestion to visit the hospital and I visited it. I was there the first time and talked to a few people and saw that I had very rich material to make a documentary. The idea came after enough conversation with the director and from there we started to do the film.
In the documentary slowly begin to emerge two people, two women who in fact are part of the story and that you avidly show the entrance process at the institution, at least one of them. This choice came naturally?
FV: Yes, I started attending the institution, we went with a very small team and we started to integrate in the Criamundo, which is the group speak off that exist in the hospital. The whole team did crafts with them, sometimes hung up the equipment and left with them in their activities, was a kind of test so we can create that intimacy with the camera. The connection of Rosângela and Leonor was built in the process, I also created links with other people of Criamundo that I filmed, but in the end we have just filmed them both. We did interviews with many of the patients we have 250 hours of film to transform them in 76-minute of documentary. With these two we were creating this intimacy, there was a transfer between me and them and they were chosen as the main characters, but it was not an original idea to make a documentary about them, was actually built in the editing.
What were the main challenges when shooting within an institution like that?
FV: Well, it was a rather burocratic process. From getting the permission to enter the hospital, we had all the support director at the time for this dive at all levels with the people who work there, it was a daily achievement for our team, production, because filming a psychiatric hospital is a pretty crazy idea. They had a psychologist who asked me, why I chose to interview that person and not the other? Why that person has everything and you are interested in a certain character? They are also questions that you put yourself. Among other difficulties of making the movie is how to get permission, how to get money, how to get funding, to be there even as it renders, briefing the director, this whole process is difficult and time consuming, but well worth it, because the pleasure of film making and the power to move people is cool and pleasant.
You said you had to ask for permits, the directors demanded you something while filming patients?
FV: They first tried to understand my purpose, I did not want to make a sensationalist documentary, but one that is talk about the subjectivity of that world and it was more a matter of trust, get them to understand my work, what I wanted to do and my intuitions. They saw my previous work and after getting that confidence, from there, there was not more requirements, but we also asked permission to all the people who are in the film, it was necessary to shoot.
Do you think being a woman is easier or not?
FV: Actually I was very interested in other characters in Israel who is in the movie, I love him, but then he went through some personal issues. I do not know if been woman would be different, would be another film made by another person, man or woman, but I cannot identify if there is a gender issue really. I had a producer who was a woman and others who were men, but I honestly cannot answer that question.
When you showed the film for the first time was in Brazil.
FV: We showed some slips here in France. The world premiere was in Curitiba.
What was the feeback in Brazil to your documentary?
FV: It was very positive, I had the film in some cinema rooms. I was very pleased the reaction of people mainly from psychology area who are interested in the theme of madness and psychoanalysis. It is a film that can serve a lot of basis for this issue that has to be discussed, because it is very important. But I'm happy with the critics that were made that was very positive.
On the other hand, with this documentary you expose a mental health system with many weaknesses, which is not much supported by the Brazilian government or is it?
VF: I did the documentary accordingly. It is a system that does not pass by the political parties, I think it is a very strong thing in Brazil that is mental health. I know that portrays a poor health system, but the purpose of it was not to make a denunciation, but to show the weaknesses of the characters, the world they live in and that reality in the hospital they attended, I found people very engaged with this cause.
When did you start filming were you aware of what was to have a mental illness and when it was finished the documentary it changed your concept?
FV: I had a very naive idea. I had a very superficial notion as the whole world knows about mental illness. The first time I entered the hospital I was intimidated by all that madness and a certain freedom. Gradually the documentary will show the complexity of what is this theme. As I filmed for four years this issue and into the lives of these people, it allowed me to deepen and know better that world, in the film I portrait the disease and I asked them about the disease, but that did not interest me, what I wanted to do was show as they could see me despite that mental suffering and how they could deal with it at different times of their life, between madness and humanity.
One of your characters eventually commit suicide at the end. What impact this had?
FV: I remembered that she had had many encounters with death, had several attempts at suicide and lived always trying to avoid it, but it was very present in her life. This issue of death touched me, for me it was a difficult time in my life. As for the impact it had on the film, I decided to finish the film there, perhaps would have continued to shoot because the decision to end the shooting had not yet been taken. Her death did not affect me, I prefer to believe that did not, I think the last few years of it from the testimony of people close to her told me she clung to that a little shooting, but the truth of what happened no one knows.
Changing the subject, you live in Paris and now are you preparing another documentary or film?
FV: I'm with three projects. One in Brazil, one in France on the French identity crisis and a fiction that are underway.
It is easier to film outside or within Brazil, not taking into account the funding?
FV: It depends. In Brazil there are people very open to ideas, I have worked abroad, on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the people who lived around the wall, but it depends. I think in Brazil, I do not know how it will be from now on, there has been a very dynamic movement in terms of cinema, much to be produced, with funds to shoot films.
And the Brazilian public enjoys going to the cinema to see documentaries?
FV: That's something that is implementing gradually the national film is not a tradition, but I believe that in time we will implement our film culture, it will happen, but it is still a process that is starting, because it does not have much public.
