The Ordinary Madness of a Daughter of Ham

The Ordinary Madness of a Daughter of Ham

The Ordinary Madness of a Daughter of Ham

Share

The Ordinary Madness of a Daughter of Ham

"Fifty Years in Blackness: Between Liberation and Madness"

1986

1h 19m

10.0(1 votes)

Drama

Overview

In Jean Rouch's cinematic reinterpretation of Julius-Amédée Laou's theatrical work, a freshly appointed nurse steps into the chaotic world of a psychiatric ward. Tasked with nurturing the minds within, she forms a profound connection with a patient from Martinique who has been confined within the institution's walls for half a century. As their relationship deepens, the lines between reality and delusion blur, weaving a complex narrative of human connection and psychological intrigue.

Links & Resources

Social & External

Production Companies

INA

CNRS Images

The people behind it

Cast & crew

3 featured cast members

Starring

Jenny Alpha

Jenny Alpha

Madame Amélie

Sylvie Laporte

Sylvie Laporte

Fernande

Cathérine Rougelin

Mon Curé Blanc

Creative team

Directed by: Jean Rouch
Philippe Costantini
Written by: Julius-Amédée Laou
Produced by: Daniel Mesguich

Similar Movies

Billy the Kid

Billy the Kid

Michael Morpurgo's heart warming story of a champion Chelsea footballer set against the backdrop of the Second World War.

The Seagull

The Seagull

Nina, a young actress who finds herself in an emotional turmoil during her opening night, struggles with a rehearsal that challenges her limits.

Right Below The Neck

Right Below The Neck

A Theater student named Laras witnesses her friends rehearsing for a performance. At the same time, Laras is in the middle of conflict with someone from her house hold

CARVED.

CARVED.

A surrealist perspective on self harm and the want for death.

Harvey's Dream

Harvey's Dream

A typical Saturday morning for an unhappily married couple decades into their lives together becomes anything but typical when the husband's neurological decline and uncertain memory may or may not reveal unthinkable tragedy.

After Darkness

After Darkness

To salve his guilty conscience an elder brother removes his disturbed younger sibling from a mental institution after a suicide attempt and tries to bring him back to mental competency through one on one contact. Free of the institution he continues to be haunted by dreams of a lost twin and chants the eerie phrase "Do I stand before the king?" It is the elder brother that seems doomed to lose himself in his brother's insanity.

Persona

Persona

A young nurse, Alma, is put in charge of Elisabeth Vogler: an actress who is seemingly healthy in all respects, but will not talk. As they spend time together, Alma speaks to Elisabeth constantly, never receiving any answer.

National Theatre Live: Vanya

National Theatre Live: Vanya

Andrew Scott brings multiple characters to life in Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, filmed live in West End, London. Hopes, dreams, and regrets are thrust into sharp focus in this one-man adaptation which explores the complexities of human emotions.

Moondog Airwaves

Moondog Airwaves

On the stormy night of July 5th, 1995, Trick Stuart works the graveyard shift with his plus-sized pal Meathead at the Delta Kream, a 24HR fast food joint. As they practice their brass band routine, a very unexpected visitor arrives.

Satyricon

Satyricon

After his young lover, Gitone, leaves him for another man, Encolpio decides to kill himself, but a sudden earthquake destroys his home before he has a chance to do so. Now wandering around Rome in the time of Nero, Encolpio encounters one bizarre and surreal scene after another.

Cain Rose Up

Cain Rose Up

College student, Curt Garrish, goes on a murderous rampage.

The Holy Mountain

The Holy Mountain

The Alchemist assembles together a group of people from all walks of life to represent the planets in the solar system. The occult adept's intention is to put his recruits through strange mystical rites and divest them of their worldly baggage before embarking on a trip to Lotus Island. There they ascend the Holy Mountain to displace the immortal gods who secretly rule the universe.

Alice

Alice

Alice Tate, mother of two, with a marriage of 16 years, finds herself falling for a handsome sax player, Joe. Stricken with a backache, she consults herbalist Dr. Yang, who realizes that her problems are not related to her back, but in her mind and heart. Dr. Yang's magical herbs give Alice wondrous powers, taking her out of her well-established rut.

McQueen

McQueen

Movie of the stage play McQueen (written by British playwright James Phillips), at the St James Theatre, London, in May 2015 Featuring: Stephen Wight as Lee Dianna Agron as Dahlia, Tracy-Ann Oberman, Laura Lees and David Shaw-Parker

Honeycomb

Honeycomb

Teresa and Peter settle down in their new home after the wedding. Things are going well until her childhood furniture arrives, sending Teresa into horrible flashbacks of turmoil from memories of her youth.

Reinventing Marvin

Reinventing Marvin

Telling the true story of Marvin Bijou, a young boy from a working-class family in a small village, who suffers constant bullying at school and home for being ‘different’ – too sensitive and too feminine. A chance encounter with a drama teacher opens the doors to a world that offers him the chance to escape his situation.

EverAfter

EverAfter

Danielle, a vibrant young woman, was forced into servitude after the death of her father when she was a young girl. Danielle's stepmother, Rodmilla, is a heartless woman who forces Danielle to do the cooking and cleaning, while she tries to marry off the eldest of her two daughters to the prince. But Danielle's life takes a wonderful turn when, under the guise of a visiting royal, she meets the charming Prince Henry.

Wuthering Heights

Wuthering Heights

As Cathy Linton nears death, she finds herself in a loop of memories while coming to terms with the truth of the world she’s lived and loved in.

SOS jeunesse en détresse

SOS jeunesse en détresse

Today in France, one in five young people suffers from severe depressive symptoms, and the number of minors visiting psychiatric emergency rooms has tripled in the last five years. Despite the political will that has been demonstrated, child psychiatry is nevertheless faced with a severe lack of resources. The interminable waiting times for treatment are causing a surge in prescriptions for psychotropic drugs.

The Tales of Hoffman - National Opera Company (INBAL)

The Tales of Hoffman - National Opera Company (INBAL)

Opera in three acts, a prologue and an epilogue, by Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880), with a libretto in French by Jules Barbier (1825-1901), based on a work that Barbier himself and Michel Carré (1821-1872) had written based on stories by E.T.A. Hoffmann (1776-1822). Approximate duration: 2 h 45 min Recommended for those over 15 years old. The young poet Hoffmann, accompanied by Nicklausse, his alter ego and confidant, is in a tavern next to the theatre where Mozart's Don Giovanni is being performed. During the opera's intermission, some diners arrive at the bar who, upon seeing the poet, encourage him to sing and tell them the story of his famous love affairs. Hoffmann finally gives in and shares with them the stories of Olympia, Antonia and Giulietta. They, absorbed in the poet's stories, remain in the tavern, forgetting about the opera performance.

Recommended Movies

The Human Voice

The Human Voice

A woman watches time pass beside the suitcases of her ex-lover (who is supposed to come pick them up but never arrives) and a restless dog who doesn't understand that his master has abandoned him.

Synecdoche, New York

Synecdoche, New York

A theater director struggles with his work, and the women in his life, as he attempts to create a life-size replica of New York inside a warehouse as part of his new play.

Girl in the Bunker

Girl in the Bunker

When Elizabeth is abducted by a fugitive sexual predator, she realizes she must take matters into her own hands and plot her escape. Based on a true story.

The Giver

The Giver

In a seemingly perfect community, without war, pain, suffering, differences or choice, a young boy is chosen to learn from an elderly man about the true pain and pleasure of the "real" world.

Girl, Interrupted

Girl, Interrupted

Set in the changing world of the late 1960s, Susanna Kaysen's prescribed "short rest" from a psychiatrist she had met only once becomes a strange, unknown journey into Alice's Wonderland, where she struggles with the thin line between normal and crazy. Susanna soon realizes how hard it is to get out once she has been committed, and she ultimately has to choose between the world of people who belong inside or the difficult world of reality outside.

The Cut

The Cut

A retired boxer intends to return to the ring for one last shot at the title, but first he must make the weight. Holed up in a room in Las Vegas with an unscrupulous trainer, he embarks on an intensive and illegal weight-cutting program.

If I Had Legs I'd Kick You

If I Had Legs I'd Kick You

With her life crashing down around her, Linda attempts to navigate her child's mysterious illness, her absent husband, a missing person, and an increasingly hostile relationship with her therapist.

Shutter Island

Shutter Island

World War II soldier-turned-U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels investigates the disappearance of a patient from a hospital for the criminally insane, but his efforts are compromised by troubling visions and a mysterious doctor.

Naked Lunch

Naked Lunch

Blank-faced bug killer Bill Lee and his dead-eyed wife, Joan, like to get high on Bill's pest poisons while lounging with Beat poet pals. After meeting the devilish Dr. Benway, Bill gets a drug made from a centipede. Upon indulging, he accidentally kills Joan, takes orders from his typewriter-turned-cockroach, ends up in a constantly mutating Mediterranean city and learns that his hip friends have published his work -- which he doesn't remember writing.

Speak

Speak

Freshman high-school student Melinda has refused to speak ever since she called the cops on a popular summer party. With her old friends snubbing her for being a rat, and her parents too busy to notice her troubles, she folds into herself, trying to hide her secret: that star senior Andy raped her at the party. But Melinda does manage to find solace in her art class headed by Mr. Freeman.

Requiem for a Dream

Requiem for a Dream

The drug-induced utopias of four Coney Island residents are shattered when their addictions run deep.

The Zero Theorem

The Zero Theorem

A computer hacker's goal to discover the reason for human existence continually finds his work interrupted thanks to the Management; this time, they send a teenager and lusty love interest to distract him.

Here

Here

An odyssey through time and memory, centered on a place in New Jersey where—from wilderness, and then, later, from a home—love, loss, struggle, hope and legacy play out between couples and families over generations.

Greta

Greta

A young woman returns a lonely widow’s lost purse, leading to an unlikely relationship between the two — until the young woman discovers the widow might not be all that she seems.

Mulholland Drive

Mulholland Drive

Blonde Betty Elms has only just arrived in Hollywood to become a movie star when she meets an enigmatic brunette with amnesia. Meanwhile, as the two set off to solve the second woman's identity, filmmaker Adam Kesher runs into ominous trouble while casting his latest project.

The Experiment

The Experiment

20 men are chosen to participate in the roles of guards and prisoners in a psychological study that ultimately spirals out of control.

The Mad Women's Ball

The Mad Women's Ball

A woman who is unfairly institutionalized at a Paris asylum plots to escape with the help of one of its nurses. Based on the novel 'Le bal des folles' by Victoria Mas.

Girl in the Box

Girl in the Box

The true story of 20-year-old Colleen Stan, a hitchhiking woman abducted by a young couple and held captive for seven years, during which time she's tortured and forced to live as a slave to her captors.

May December

May December

Twenty years after their notorious tabloid romance gripped the nation, a married couple buckles under the pressure when an actress arrives to do research for a film about their past.

The Young One

The Young One

A jazz musician seeks refuge from a lynch mob on a remote island, where he meets a hostile game warden and the young object of his attentions.