François Pain Triple Film Screening

This screening brings together three rarely seen films by François Pain that reflect the radical ethos of the La Borde psychiatric clinic, where care was shaped through improvisation, collectivity and aesthetic experimentation.

Together, the films offer a unique lens on psychiatry, creativity and schizoanalytic cinema.

The Green Notebook (Le cahier Vert, 1980), co-written by Guattari, employs layered visual techniques and fragmented sound to evoke dissociative perception, suggesting a schizoanalytic cinema untethered from conventional narrative form.

The Crystal Wave (La vague de cristal, 1985) is a surreal, semi-fictional allegory co-created with patients, dramatising the rhythms of clinic life through a dreamlike, collaborative narrative.

Min Tanaka à La Borde (1986) captures Butoh dancer Min Tanaka’s improvised hyper dance performance at the clinic, offering a visceral expression of Deleuze and Guattari’s body without organs.

François Pain:

François Pain is a filmmaker and editor whose work is closely aligned with the radical psychiatric practices of the La Borde clinic in France. Beginning as a medical intern at the clinic in 1966, Pain collaborated with key figures of institutional psychotherapy including Jean Oury, Fernand Deligny and Félix Guattari. Through his long-running engagement with La Borde, Pain has produced a singular body of work that blurs documentary and fiction, charting the political, perceptual and aesthetic dimensions of experimental psychiatry.

Image: François Pain 'The Crystal Wave' 1985. Digitised movie from HI8, 19:17 minutes. Courtesy of the artist and New Galerie, Paris.