Schnupfen im Kopf

Head Cold

"What belongs and what doesn‘t? You can′t just make a collection of material from your own life. That‘s not possible." This key sentence is from a staged video diary that Gamma Bak filmed in 1993 at her kitchen table, two years before she underwent her first psychotic episode. Five more episodes follow, as do many interviews – with friends, ex-partners, colleagues, relatives and even with herself – that have accrued during her adult life. They all revolve around the question of what is a psychosis.

Does the diagnose stem from the inner or outer world? How is one distinguished from the other? How do drugs and stays in psychiatric wards alter the terms for defining the "I", such as sexuality, work and apartment? The fullness of the conversations and the exact selection of (auto)portraits show how identity evades the field of language and linear narrative. With "Schnupfen im Kopf" Gamma Bak succeeds in removing the intimacy of illness from the realm of taboo and bringing it back into society as a constituent component.

Stefanie Schulte Strathaus

Source: 60. Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin (Catalogue)