Kino Basaglia

Basaglia on screen: film, madness, and freedom.

Kino Basaglia is part of the official programme of the European Capital of Culture 2025 Nova Gorica - Gorizia. 

Franco Basaglia was a pioneer in psychiatry who, through his work and ideas, transformed the treatment of mental patients. With his psychiatric revolution, he eradicated the system of isolation and stigmatization that patients, labeled as "mad," experienced. The inscription "Freedom is therapeutic" on the wall of the former psychiatric hospital in Trieste remains an inspiration for a more humanistic approach to mental health care.

Up Close, No One Is Normal I: 23 May 2025 at 18:00

• Abel Gardens: At a time when heated debates are taking place about the abolition of psychiatric institutions and new ways of treating patients, Sergio Zavoli travels to Gorizia to meet the director of the psychiatric hospital, Franco Basaglia, and learn about his revolutionary, innovative methods. Ten years later, on 13 May 1978, Law 180 was passed, mandating the definitive closure of psychiatric hospitals and the abolition of inhumane therapeutic methods.
• Are the Poor Mad? The psychiatric hospital Santa Maria della Pietà in Rome is just one example of the dramatic situation faced by patients locked away in psychiatric institutions in Italy. The institution serves more as a place to remove individuals deemed unfit for life in a consumerist, profit-driven society.
• Let the Mad Be Free: In Colorno near Parma, Franco Basaglia is the director of the psychiatric hospital. He is committed to restoring dignity to the patients. He abolished electroshock therapy and opened the hospital wards. Patients can now move freely within and outside the building, communicate with the outside world, and even find suitable employment. Basaglia also talks about a case of parricide committed by a former patient.
• Unleashed: Fabio Spada is a seven-year-old boy from the Roman suburb of San Basilio, considered maladjusted at school. A lonely and powerless child, infinitely creative, he finds no understanding in society. Fabio seems to harbor no illusions about a better tomorrow: he does not believe in justice and wants to defend himself from reality in his own way.

Up Close, No One Is Normal II: 23 May 2025 at 21:00

• The Maimed Tree: A time of introducing new psychiatric methods: the inhabitants of Lamporecchio, a small community near Pistoia, encounter a completely new approach to caring for people with mental illness. Psychiatric hospitals are closing, and the community and individuals take on responsibility for the ill.
• Flight: "Basaglia invited me to Trieste because he had managed to borrow a plane from Itavia and wanted to walk through the sky with patients who had always lived in confinement. This film is a simple chronicle of one day of happiness." – Silvano Agosti

Featuring: Franco Basaglia, David Cooper, Maria Grazia Giannichedda, patients and staff of the Psychiatric Hospital in Trieste.

In collaboration with the publishing house /*cf., the screening will be followed by a discussion titled "Up Close, No One Is Normal" on the phenomenon of Franco Basaglia. The discussion will feature the curator of Kino Basaglia, Mila Lazić, along with two renowned experts in the field of anti-psychiatry and in Basaglia’s life and work, Vito Flaker and Juš Škraban.

Kino Basaglia in Gorizia, 13–15 June 2025, Basaglia Park, Gorizia

13 June 2025 at 21:00

• Cantico dei matti (directed by Bianca Daponte and Claudio Misculin, Italy, 2000, music video, 3’)
• Noi siamo gli errori che permettono la vostra intelligenza (directed by Erika Rossi, Italy, 2024, documentary, 85’)

14 June 2025 at 21:00

• Cantico dei matti (directed by Bianca Daponte and Claudio Misculin, Italy, 2000, music video, 3’)
• Abel Gardens (directed by Sergio Zavoli, Italy, 1968, doc. 27’): At a time when heated debates are taking place about the abolition of psychiatric institutions and new ways of treating patients, Sergio Zavoli travels to Gorizia to meet the director of the psychiatric hospital, Franco Basaglia, and learn about his revolutionary, innovative methods. Ten years later, on 13 May 1978, Law 180 was passed, mandating the definitive closure of psychiatric hospitals and the abolition of inhumane therapeutic methods.
• La porta aperta (directed by Michele Gandini, Italy, 1968, documentary, 18’)
• Corrispondenze Immaginarie (directed by Piero Pieri, Alessandro Spanghero, Italia Rai, 2025, documentary, 45’)

15 June 2025 at 21:00

• Cantico dei matti (directed by Bianca Daponte in Claudio Misculin, Italy, 2000, music video, 3’)
• La seconda ombra (directed by Silvano Agosti, Italy, 2000, 85’)

Letni kino Silvana Furlana, Nova Gorica: 31 July 2025 at 21:00

• Specijalno vaspitanje (directed by Goran Marković, Yugoslavia, 1977, 110’)