Glimpses of Beauty

Photographer-turned-radiologist José Fontes revisits the now-inactive Miguel Bombarda psychiatric hospital where, for two weeks in 1968, he captured the complexities of everyday life in a series of harrowing photographs. As past and present converge – as old photographs meet present-day visual sketches, and as the silence of neglect clashes with deep-seated aural textures – a tentative cinematic patchwork blooms with the intent of capturing (or outright creating) fleeting visions of beauty in a most disquieting environment.