The life of the Nobel Prize-winning mathematician and schizophrenic John Nash — the inspiration for the feature film A Beautiful Mind — is a powerful exploration of how genius and madness can become intertwined.
Filmmaker Jonathan Caouette's documentary on growing up with his schizophrenic mother -- a mixture of snapshots, Super-8, answering machine messages, video diaries, early short films, and more -- culled from 19 years of his life.
Tarnation
2003
6
Until recently geometry was 'cold', incapable of describing the irregular shape of a cloud, the slope of a mountain or the beauty of the human body. With fractal geometry, Benoit Mandelbrot gave us a language for our natural world. In this captivating documentary, the man himself explains this groundbreaking discovery.
Clouds Are Not Spheres
2010
7
Does infinity exist? Can we experience the Infinite? In an animated film (created by artists from 10 countries) the world's most cutting-edge scientists and mathematicians go in search of the infinite and its mind-bending implications for the universe. Eminent mathematicians, particle physicists and cosmologists dive into infinity and its mind-bending implications for the universe.
A Trip to Infinity
2022
7
Narrated by Oscar-winning actor Jeremy Irons, The Genius of George Boole assembles academics and industry leaders from across the globe to explore the life and importance of one of the world’s greatest unsung heroes.
The Genius of George Boole
2015
7
Billy is a film buff who films himself non-stop. During a film shoot, he meets Lawrence Côté-Collins and the two become friends. One night, he assaults her. Years later, in prison for the deaths of two people, Billy is diagnosed with schizophrenia. With the help of the filmmaker, his only remaining relationship apart from his family, his personal archives become an invaluable resource for understanding his illness. A formal deconstruction of schizophrenia through a remarkably open-minded gaze.
Billy
2024
0
In April 2013, a lecturer at the University of New Hampshire submitted a paper to the Annals of Mathematics. Within weeks word spread: a little-known mathematician, with no permanent job, working in complete isolation, had made an important breakthrough toward solving the Twin Prime Conjecture. Yitang Zhang's techniques for bounding the gaps between primes soon led to rapid progress by the Polymath Group, and a further innovation by James Maynard.
Counting from Infinity: Yitang Zhang and the Twin Prime Conjecture
2015
7
In this horrifyingly modern fairytale lurks an online Boogeyman and two 12-year-old girls who would kill for him. The entrance to the internet quickly leads to its darkest basement. How responsible are our children for what they find there?
Beware the Slenderman
2016
6
A significant number of American children and teenagers - from all social backgrounds - suffer from mental disorders, schizophrenia, autism and emotional problems, leading them to isolation from society while treating their issues in mental health facilities. But there's no end in sight for those young individuals when they face obstacles and mistreatment in inadequate places under the supervision of careless and inexperienced professionals. The documentary follows some of those public mental institutions and another private center dealing with troubled kids and reveals what's wrong with their procedures, and the irreparable harm they cause in those patients.
Children of Darkness
1983
6
Shows masked mental patients enacting various schizophrenic symptoms as they were understood at the time. A disturbing film that raises questions about the condition and treatment of its subjects. (archive.org) “Abstract: This film describes and demonstrates four types of schizophrenia. Filmed at various New York institutions, it shows patients singly and grouped in large, outside recreational areas. Some patients are blindfolded. Symptoms shown include: social apathy, delusions, hallucinations, hebephrenic reactions, cerea flexibilitas, rigidity, motor stereotypes, posturing, and echopraxia.” (Guide to Mental Health Motion Pictures)
Symptoms in Schizophrenia
1938
6
Jonas Elrod woke up one day with the ability to see and hear angels, demons and ghosts. Filmed over the course of three years, this documentary follows Jonas and his girlfriend as they try to understand the phenomenon.
Wake Up
2010
6
Without us noticing, modern life has been taken over. Algorithms run everything from search engines on the internet to satnavs and credit card data security - they even help us travel the world, find love and save lives. Mathematician Professor Marcus du Sautoy demystifies the hidden world of algorithms. By showing us some of the algorithms most essential to our lives, he reveals where these 2,000-year-old problem solvers came from, how they work, what they have achieved and how they are now so advanced they can even programme themselves.
The Secret Rules of Modern Living: Algorithms
2015
7
A BBC documentary uncovers, for the first time, the original manuscript where Newton forecast the date of the end of the world. Newton, the father of modern mathematics, dedicated a large part of his life to a quest to decode the Bible which he believed to be the word of God. For over 50 years, he studied the Bible trying to unravel God's secret laws of the Universe. He was fanatical in his quest to discover the date for the Second Coming of Christ and the end of the world. Scholars have spent years trying to unravel Newton's writings on the Book of Revelation to establish when he thought the apocalypse was coming.
Newton: The Dark Heretic
2003
4
The filmmakers' 21-year-old daughter journeys from locked-down psych wards and diagnostic labels toward expansive worlds of creativity, connection, and greater meaning. Featuring insights from trauma experts and others, the film challenges the widespread idea that mental illness should be understood purely in biological terms, revealing the myriad ways that madness has meaning beyond brain chemistry.
Drunk on Too Much Life
2021
10
After Dontre Hamilton, a black, unarmed man diagnosed with schizophrenia, was shot 14 times and killed by police in Milwaukee, his family embarks on a quest for answers, justice and reform as the investigation unfolds.
The Blood Is at the Doorstep
2017
6
Documentary about an African-American girl who grows up to help NASA put astronauts into space and bring them home safely. She was one of the main characters in the movie, "Hidden Figures." Includes interview with Johnson.
Outlier: the story of Katherine Johnson
2019
0
One woman and her family trek the broken mental health system in an effort to save her brother as he descends into madness. Beginning as a testimony of his sanity, his iPhone video diary ultimately becomes an unfiltered look at the mind of an untreated schizophrenic.
That Way Madness Lies...
2017
0
THEY HEARD VOICES is a documentary film exploring the Hearing Voices Movement, chronic psychosis, and the schizophrenia label. The film is a series of wide-ranging interviews with voice hearers, medical historians, anthropologists and psychiatrists from Britain and America, presenting different people’s views. Is schizophrenia hard science or an arbitrary, catch-all term with no real meaning? What does it mean for those experiencing psychosis?
They Heard Voices
2016
0
Voices is an award-winning documentary that features the stark and intimate portraits of three very different individuals and their struggle with severe mental illness in America. The stories of Sharon, Thomas and Aaron illuminate the challenges, realities, and often complex emotions and choices that surround people with psychotic mental illness and those who love them.
Voices
2013
0
Following the Sunnyboys’ enigmatic frontman Jeremy Oxley from the band’s origins, breakthrough success and his subsequent 30-year battle with schizophrenia, The Sunnyboy is one man's inspired story of survival and hope. A meditation on a condition often stigmatised and misunderstood, Kaye Harrison’s documentary buries below the surface of Oxley’s public “identity” to explore his own reality and battle to maintain “self”. Secure in a loving relationship with his partner Mary, Oxley slowly emerges from his solitary torment to join the world we all share. The film follows him as he tentatively unpicks his confused thoughts and feelings about the past with his brother Peter. From his struggle with the physical effects of years spent self-medicating to his hopeful contemplation of a married future and a daring return to the stage, The Sunnyboy is the definitive documentary of Jeremy Oxley's journey from the Sunnyboys and back.
The Sunnyboy
2013
0
Scott Panetti was tried for the capital murder of his parents-in-law on September 8, 1992 in Gillespie County, Texas. He was subsequently sentenced to death on September 22, 1995. Panetti has an extensive history of mental illness, including schizophrenia, manic depression, auditory hallucinations and paranoia. Panetti was hospitalized, both voluntarily and involuntarily for mental illness fourteen times in six different hospitals before his arrest for capital murder in 1992. Following his conviction, Panetti’s former wife, and daughter of the victims, Sonja Alvarado, filed a petition stating that Panetti never should have been tried for the crimes as he was suffering from paranoid delusions at the time of the killings.
Executing the Insane: The Case of Scott Panetti
2007
0