Azyllo muito louco (The Alienist/A Very Crazy Asylum). 1970. Directed by Nelson Pereira dos Santos

Film

No upcoming events

Azyllo muito louco (The Alienist/A Very Crazy Asylum). 1970. Brazil. Directed by Nelson Pereira dos Santos. In Portuguese; English subtitles. 83 min.

With Nildo Parente, Isabel Ribeiro, Leila Diniz. As both his first period piece and his first color film, A Very Crazy Asylum marked a significant departure for Pereira. An idiosyncratic adaption of Machado de Assis’s 1882 novella The Alienist, the film revolves around an experimental asylum that at first seems to offer a more forward-thinking and humane treatment of the insane, until the definitions of madness are extended ad absurdum, leaving the entire town institutionalized. “There was always someone who thought they could save Brazil with a bunch of formulas,” Pereira once remarked in an interview, and beneath its colorful costuming and experimental score by Guilherme Magalhães Vaz, A Very Crazy Asylum reveals itself as a complex, allegorical critique of the era’s political regime. 35mm.

This film accompanies Nelson Pereira dos Santos: Politics and Passion.

Past events

Thu, Apr 16, 2015, 4:00 p.m.

MoMA, Floor T2, Theater 2

The Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 2
Sat, Apr 11, 2015, 7:00 p.m.

MoMA, Floor T2, Theater 2

The Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 2

Licensing

If you would like to reproduce an image of a work of art in MoMA’s collection, or an image of a MoMA publication or archival material (including installation views, checklists, and press releases), please contact Art Resource (publication in North America) or Scala Archives (publication in all other geographic locations).

MoMA licenses archival audio and select out of copyright film clips from our film collection. At this time, MoMA produced video cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. All requests to license archival audio or out of copyright film clips should be addressed to Scala Archives at [email protected]. Motion picture film stills cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. For access to motion picture film stills for research purposes, please contact the Film Study Center at [email protected]. For more information about film loans and our Circulating Film and Video Library, please visit https://www.moma.org/research/circulating-film.

If you would like to reproduce text from a MoMA publication, please email [email protected]. If you would like to publish text from MoMA’s archival materials, please fill out this permission form and send to [email protected].