NFB Collection
Beautiful Dreamers
19901 h 45 minFilm: Fiction, Feature-length fiction
Direction: John Kent Harrison
Production: Michael MaclearMartin WaltersSally BochnerColin NealeStephen J. Roth
Script: John Kent Harrison
Co-produced by Starway Films Inc. and the NFB with the financial assistance of Telefilm Canada and the Ontario Film Development Corporation.
The superintendent of the London insane asylum, Dr. Maurice Bucke, despairs of the treatment methods in use during the Victorian era, which consist essentially of restraint and electroshock. At a conference in Philadelphia, he makes the acquaintance of poet Walt Whitman.
This meeting will radically change his life, and that of his wife and patients. Whitman, who travels to London at Bucke's invitation, has avant-garde ideas about mental illness, sexuality, the emotions and life in general--ideas that are profoundly humanistic and enlightened.
This film is based on historical events.
Subject categories
- Psychology and Psychiatry > Institutional CarePortraits
- Literature and Language > PortraitsWorld Literature
Credits
- director
- John Kent Harrison
- script
- John Kent Harrison
- producer
- Michael Maclear
- Martin Walters
- Sally Bochner
- executive producer
- Colin Neale
- Stephen J. Roth
- camera
- François Protat
- editing
- Ron Wisman
- sound editing
- Jim Hopkins
- re-recording
- Jean-Pierre Joutel
- music
- Lawrence Shragge
- cast
- Colm Feore
- Colin Fox
- David Gardner
- Barbara Gordon
- Tom McCamus
- Sheila McCarthy
- Wendel Meldrum
- Marsha Moreau
- Albert Schultz
- Rip Torn