Trailer for Kings Park: Stories from an American Mental Institution.
Do abandoned buildings have a voice? The massive and forbidding Kings Park State Hospital warehoused close to 10,000 patients at its height. The so-called patients included the sane, the homeless, and even children born and raised there. Among them was Lucy Winer, the film’s director, who was committed as a suicidal teenager in the late 1960s. “Kings Park” is the story of one woman’s courage, as she visits her now abandoned “home,” wanders the decrepit halls, and begins a ten-year quest to face her past. Along the way the film sheds light on the nation’s past and current mental healthcare crisis, captures the eerie legacy and spirit of the moldering hospital, and gives it, and its ex-patients, voice. Using firsthand accounts that bear witness to the many changes in treatment, policy and attitudes over the past century, "Kings Park" is a fascinating and highly compelling look at both the past and the present state of "warehousing people."