[Documentary of Interest] Crazy Art

Synopsis: The documentary explores how art can be used by someone experiencing psychotic, depressive and manic symptoms to reduce and manage those symptoms. It also explores how, in the history of art, as with van Gogh, creativity can reach brilliant heights when psychiatric symptoms are peaking, and how that same creativity, when intensified, can itself increase madness..

The role of art as a form of distraction or meditation to tame the savagery of mental illness is discussed by the three featured artists. The “identity journey” — from madman to Artist— forms a focus in seeing how recovery can be constructed bit by bit.