Asylum (1972) (The Amicus Collection)

In the 1950s and '60s, controversial Scottish psychiatrist R.D. Laing enacted a radical new therapy for the mentally ill. Setting up a series of "safe houses" where schizophrenics could live communally and without medication in a nurturing home environment, Laing promoted freedom, responsibility, and compassion as methods to foster his patients' mental healing. Filmmaker Peter Robinson chronicled Laing's revolutionary ideas in the astonishing 1971 documentary ASYLUM, recording his seven-week stay at the Archway Community safe house in London in an honest style that both humanized the face of madness and set the standard for cinema verite filmmaking.