All Divided Selves at Barbican Cinema

Nominated for this year’s Turner Prize, artist Luke Fowler’s debut feature explores the seminal Scottish psychiatrist R.D. Laing. The guru-like and charismatic Laing became a household name following his 1960 bestseller The Divided Self and his frequent television appearances where he willingly courted the fame borne out of his radical views on mental illness. This documentary film is both a gallery installation and cinematic experience, and echoes the conflicts within Laing himself against a backdrop of British cultural change in the 60s and 70s. Fowler produces a dense, engaging and lyrical collage, weaving archival material with his own filmic observations and a dynamic soundtrack of field recordings by Éric La Casa, Jean-Luc Guionnet and Alasdair Roberts.