Abstract

Crossing reflection and concepts in mental health with concepts in film aesthetics, here is an introduction to a research focuses on the Portuguese cinematography. I’ll start de work with a choice of relevant films whose content refers to specific cases of mental health — not only in the psychiatric field, but also in the broader scope of social pathologies. Our starting assumption is that Cinema is as important for Psychiatry as Psychiatry is for Cinema. Certainly, this does not happen in a direct way, since Psychiatry is not an aesthetic activity, and Cinema is not, in turn, a clinical activity, in the proper sense of the term. Considering the critical territory of our project — our field of research —, a film like «Jaime» (António Reis, 1974), apart from its more salient content, was the first to show, in Portugal, the space of a Psychiatric Hospital and the presence of patients in these spaces. It is a film that was decisive both for Psychiatry and for Cinema. What we are doing here is raising questions from that film, with that film, and above all from the interview given by António Reis to João César Monteiro — the vocabulary we are going to highlight is therefore certainly not common.