VAN GOGH AND THE HOSPITAL GARDEN

Showing In

SHORTS PROGRAM 6: DOCUNATION
Alamo Drafthouse Cinema (Screen 2), Mtn View Sat, Mar 21 2:25 PM
Real stories, real stakes, real emotion. These powerful documentaries take you inside lives and communities rarely seen on screen—intimate, eye-opening, and deeply human.
SHORTS PROGRAM 6: DOCUNATION
Alamo Drafthouse Cinema (Screen 3), Mtn View Sun, Mar 22 2:15 PM
Real stories, real stakes, real emotion. These powerful documentaries take you inside lives and communities rarely seen on screen—intimate, eye-opening, and deeply human.
Film Info
Type of Film/Event:Film
Runtime (minutes):7
Premiere Status:San Jose - SF Bay Area Premiere
Genre:Documentary
Original Language:English
French
Subtitles (Language):English
Cast/Crew Info
Cast:Dr. Jean-Marc Boulon
Devi Ormand
Director:Mustafa Eck
Executive Producer:Mustafa Zeno
Producer(s):Associate producer Pierre Contreras
Cinematography:Eitan Elmagor
Editor:Nathan Brunskill

Description

On May 8, 1889, Vincent van Gogh voluntarily entered the psychiatric hospital of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole near Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. He arrived exhausted, unstable, and fearful of his own mind. The next day, he wrote to his brother Theo that he had begun painting “violet irises,” turning almost immediately to the hospital’s enclosed garden as both refuge and subject. Within those stone walls, Van Gogh found a rare balance between confinement and freedom. The garden became a place where observation softened despair and painting offered structure to chaos. During his year at Saint-Paul-de-Mausole, Van Gogh produced more than 150 works, many of them drawn directly from the hospital grounds. Olive trees, cypresses, irises, and wheat fields recur again and again, not as static scenery but as emotional landscapes—charged with movement and rhythm. The garden was not merely a backdrop; it became a part of his treatment. In returning daily to the same paths, the same flowers, the same changing light, Van Gogh developed a practice rooted in repetition, presence, and attention. Art became a form of care, a way of enduring, and a means of communicating when words failed. More than a century later, the hospital still stands, but Saint-Paul-de-Mausole is not frozen in time. It continues to function as a psychiatric care facility, and the relationship between healing and creativity that shaped Van Gogh’s experience remains. Today, patients are encouraged to engage in visual practices—painting, drawing, not as therapy in a narrow sense, but as tools for self-expression, grounding, and recovery. This film explores the enduring legacy of the garden and the quiet continuity between past and present. Moving between Van Gogh’s paintings and contemporary life at the hospital, the film traces how creativity can bridge inner turmoil and the external world. Through quiet intimate observation of the garden, the camera lingers on the same motifs Van Gogh once studied: the movement of wind through trees, the shifting colors of flowers, the tension between enclosure and openness. These images are paired with reflections from a patient, illuminating how artistic practice continues to offer solace in moments of vulnerability. Saint-Paul-de-Mausole’s garden becomes a living archive, holding traces of one man’s struggle while continuing to nurture countless others. In returning to this place, the film invites viewers to consider how creativity persists across time and care can take many forms.