Promo trailer for Peopl in White.
The same filmmaker/artist team that brought the very popular Complaints Choir to Hot Docs last year is back with another dynamic, thought-provoking community art project-cum-documentary. This time they explore the complex relationships between doctors and clients in mental health care, from the clients’ perspective. In a group therapy setting, nine people share their experiences with psychoanalysis, psychiatry and institutional care. As they exchange revealing recollections of their doctor-patient interactions, stories of kindness, abuse, dependency, trauma and life-saving breakthroughs unfold. Intriguing questions of perspective and subjectivity emerge as the ex-patients inventively re-stage their memories. What the clients desire is empathy. What they don’t have is power. Also haunting is the unnatural imbalance of clinical boundaries: the doctors know their clients’ innermost secrets yet the clients know nothing of their doctors. A fresh look at the most profound and perilous of human relationships.