Film about Mexican mental asylum run by the patients

What happens when the inmates run the asylum? Mark Aitken's forthcoming documentary "Dead When I Got Here" answers that question. It is a film about a Juárez, Mexico mental asylum where the patients are the administrators. I first saw excerpts from this film-in-progress at the flat of my friend Mark Pilkington who is composing the soundtrack. The striking images of madness, poverty, humanity, and hope have stayed with me. From the director's diary:

Just past the last junkyard on the curdled fringe of Juárez, Highway 45 begins to cut through open desert. Distant mountains frame scattered abandoned houses. Silent witnesses to thousands of people escaping poverty and violence or those dismissed in shallow graves. The US border is only several miles away. There’s good reason why a mental asylum run by its own patients exists here.
In 1998, ‘El’ Pastor Galvan, a street preacher from Juárez, started to build the asylum in the desert for the dispossessed. He called it Vision and Action.
‘We started with four rooms – abandoned houses without a roof. 25 patients and 2 donkeys – the donkeys where utilized to carry firewood to the kitchen. My wife was with me and she was the one who cooked and cleaned the dishes.‘
Some years later Juárez photographer Julian Cardona was driving down Highway 45 with his friend, writer Charles Bowden. Julian was going to take advantage of the late afternoon light to photograph a replica of the English Uffington White Horse etched into a mountain. The horse was paid for by Juárez cartel boss Amado Carrillo Fuentes, so called ‘Lord of the Skies’ because of his fleet of Boeing 727s.
While taking pictures they encountered people wandering the desert, draping mesquite bushes with blankets so as to burn off bloodsuckers in the sun. These people said they ran their own mental asylum nearby. The photographer and writer were amazed at what they found.

"Dead When I Got Here"

David Pescovitz is Boing Boing's co-editor/managing partner. He's also a research director at Institute for the Future. On Instagram, he's @pesco.

More at Boing Boing

Eurovision 2013: An American in London

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

dantsea

This sounds like a very basic, very honest adaption of the Therapeutic Community idea. Good for him, good for them.
Rebecca Coates

http://deadwhenigothere.org/the-film-3/ – the comment section: Estranged daughter? Did she manage to gain contact? Crazy.
- Gabriela K
  
  I wonder about that too.
- Mark Aitken
  
  Yeah, the daughter has contacted me and spoken to her father via Skype. I’m going over to the states to visit and film her in Sept – a family reunion is planned but neither of them have passports! The craziness continues…
  Mark – Director
ChicagoD

Huh. That was Spanish? I would have sworn it was French.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_of_Hearts_(1966_film)
http://www.facebook.com/stephen.kilpatrick.90 Stephen Kilpatrick

El Patcho Adams.
mtdna

Is it intended to be a metaphor for the US government, or is that accidental?
- cdh1971
  
  I was going to make the same observation, specifically Congress & The Supreme Court – but you beat me to it.
Robert White

So this is a real life Clans of the Alphane Moon?
Brainspore

I’m glad this worked out better than when they tried that in Arkham.
just1more

Charles Bowden writes extensively about the asylum in his excellent book about Juarez, “Murder City”.