In this adaptation by Jean Rouch of a stage play by Julius Amédée Laou, a young nurse is hired to care for patients in a mental institution. She begins to work with a long-time patient, a Martinican woman who has spent 50 years in the facility. Their interchange becomes increasingly complicated—even delusional. Framed as a case presented by a psychiatrist to his colleagues, the action in The Ordinary Madness of a Daughter of Ham is similarly presented to the film’s viewers, who become witnesses to this spectacle alongside the doctors.
A conversation with Julius-Amédée Laou will follow this screening.