An intimate, very visual exploration of the harrowing cycle of bipolar disorder
For Ellice Stevens, bipolar disorder is a constant, cyclical struggle that leaves her abruptly shifting between her ‘real’, rational self, her mania and her extreme depressive states. In her lowest periods, she’s unable to carry out even the most routine tasks, such as throwing away rubbish or picking up clothes off her floor. The London-based filmmaker Dorothy Allen-Pickard’s short The Mess uses interviews, disorienting figurative imagery and special effects to bring Stevens’s subjective experience of the complex and often debilitating disorder to life.
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Consciousness and altered states
What do screens depicting serene natural scenes mean to those living in lock-up?
12 minutes
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Family life
A mother and child bond in an unusual prison visitation space in this poignant portrait
11 minutes
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Illness and disease
Humanity eradicated smallpox 45 years ago. It’s a story worth remembering
25 minutes
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Wellbeing
Children of the Rwandan genocide face a unique stigma 30 years later
20 minutes
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Cognition and intelligence
A father forgets his child’s name for the first time in this poetic reflection on memory
4 minutes
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War and peace
A frontline soldier’s moving account of the fabled ‘Christmas truce’ of 1914
12 minutes
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Technology and the self
A haunting scene from ‘Minority Report’ inspires a voyage into time and memory
7 minutes
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Family life
The stream-of-consciousness thoughts and memories that emerge while cooking a meal
5 minutes
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Ageing and death
We’re not the only animals that appear to grieve. What are the implications?
6 minutes