Not Everything Disappears

Abstract

"Not Everything Disappears" is a short film about the work of artist Peter Malt at a psychiatric hospital in Berlin Germany in 1986. The film follows his daily activities as he paints the walls of the hospital while patients surround him. He is accompanied by his partner Jane, who films the painter’s work and the interactions with the patients. At the start of the film, it is difficult to make out exactly what we are witnessing. There is a barrier between the painter and the patients, but as the film progresses the rhythms of the day to day activities reveal the patients participation in the daily creations by the painter. Slowly we begin to understand that the figurative abstract characters he paints are the patients in the hospital and their experiences. In the end the film reveals that more power seems to be given to the patients, over the span of the film, through the collaboration that has taken place. The observed has become the observer.