Felicità ad oltranza

This film is about mental health. The protagonists are the users of psychiatric services in the area of Turin, in particular the guests of a “home community”, young people in their twenties and thirties. The movie gives them a space to express themselves: it includes their stories and their delirium, their poetic compositions and their songs, the desire to show and to communicate, their oddities and their humanity… During the breaks we talk to doctors, social operators, relatives and people about mental health and its remedies. It’s the result of a research made from July 1981 to May 1982, for Ufficio Salute Mentale dell’Assessorato alla Sanità of Regione Piemonte.

Traduzione in inglese Francesca Sala - English translation Francesca Sala

For almost a year I often went to Casa Famiglia (first with my video recorder, then with my camera), to know the story and the problems of its guests: seven people, between twenty and thirty-five years old. The house is “open”, in a working-class district of the city.
The film begins and ends with some “dirty” shots, in black and white, acquired from video recordings which were previously made: that’s all we have left of the genius of Carlo, who died three months before the shooting. This movie is dedicated to his unlimited inspiration, to his torments, because of which he once said in an interview: “In my life, I’d like to reach endless happiness”. (…)
The music I chose can be a key to the film, by comparing and contrasting the insanity without consent of the guests of Casa Famiglia with other “insanities” that found massive approval. The music of Sex Pistols, anarchy and madness of the most famous punk band, of someone who could find a place for inspiration, even though a suffered and inconsistent one, making it consumable, to balance the real delirium, the unfulfilled and non consumable poetics of the guests of Casa Famiglia, who maybe more than others don’t stand to “delegate the euphoria”.
On the one hand there’s music of use, of wide fruition (not only punk, but also Kim Carnes, queen of the dance floor) and on the other hand Battiato (who is also cheered or danced by young people) to represent rationality: a musical research carried out with scientific accuracy. A contrast that gives the right dignity to the mad line. “Birds fly/ with assigned rules/ to this side of universe/ to our solar system/ they spread their wings/ with a dive-descent/ they change world’s perspectives”.
Paolo Quaregna

Director: Paolo Quaregna.
Director of photography: Marco Lombardi (16mm, colore).
Sound: Riccardo Alessio.
Collaborazione: Servizi Psichiatrici Territoriali USL 123 Torino.
Production company: Paolo Quaregna e Cooperativa Grandangolo per Regione Piemonte, Assessorato alla Sanit`, Ufficio Salute Mentale.