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That Which Is Possible

Michael Gitlin

2015 01:23:40 United StatesEnglishColorStereo16:9HD video

Description

That Which Is Possible is a portrait of a community of painters, sculptors, musicians and writers making work at the Living Museum, an art-space on the grounds of a large state-run psychiatric facility in Queens, New York. Shot over the course of two years and structured across the arc of a day, the film observes with an intimate lens and unspools like a musical, both bracing and tender. That Which Is Possible explores the liberatory and reparative functions that creative action has for a group of artists drawn together by shared struggle.

The title, That Which Is Possible, points to several things at once: the Living Museum as a place where a variety of ways of being are possible, where one can paint or sculpt or write or play music, or simply be left alone for a moment outside the temporal and spatial control of the modern psychiatric institution; the way this moment outside of control allows for the possibility of spontaneous interaction, openness, and even joy; the possibility that the Living Museum might serve as a kind of template for a more humane and holistic approach to mental illness; and the utopian possibility that the Living Museum and places like it might serve as transformational fulcrum points for larger social changes.

 

About Michael Gitlin

Michael Gitlin’s work has been screened at numerous venues, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the New York Film Festival, the Toronto International Film Festival, the Full Frame Documentary Festival, the London Film Festival and the Whitney Biennial Exhibition. His 16mm film, The Birdpeople (61 minutes, 2004), is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art. Gitlin was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2006. His work has also been supported by the Jerome Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Gitlin received an M.F.A. from Bard College. He teaches at Hunter College in New York City