Delirium

Directed by Mindy Faber

Defiantly humorous in its tone, Delirium reflects Faber’s mother’s personal experience with what has been classified as “female hysteria.” While never reducing her mother’s condition to a single explanation, Delirium firmly and convincingly links her illness to the historically embattled position women hold in a patriarchal culture. The video layers haunting imagery and humorous iconoclasm, referencing everything from television episodes of I Love Lucy to Charcot’s 19th Century photos of female hysterics. Delirium contends that female mental illness must be understood within the political/social arena, and that in many instances women’s reactions of violence, anger, and depression are indeed sane reactions to abhorrent situations.