Joana Masó

Halfway between documentary, speculative fiction and experimental cinema, POTENTIAL HISTORY starts from the fact that there is a past that is not reflected in official histories. A critical reading of archives is thus required to tell the stories that are not documented. The film appropriates a concept developed by Ariella Aïsha Azoulay to narrate the ‘potential history’ of Francesc Tosquelles, a Catalan psychiatrist and refugee from the Spanish civil war who ran a provincial hospital in France during the Nazi occupation. Revolutionary politics from the 1930s opened the way to revolutionizing therapy.

Halfway between documentary, speculative fiction and experimental cinema, POTENTIAL HISTORY starts from the fact that there is a past that is not reflected in official histories. A critical reading of archives is thus required to tell the stories that are not documented. The film appropriates a concept developed by Ariella Aïsha Azoulay to narrate the ‘potential history’ of Francesc Tosquelles, a Catalan psychiatrist and refugee from the Spanish civil war who ran a provincial hospital in France during the Nazi occupation. Revolutionary politics from the 1930s opened the way to revolutionizing therapy.