Marat Sade Bohnice records the restaging of Peter Weiss’ 1963 play Marat/Sade. The play imagines that during the Marquis de Sade’s institutionalization in the Charenton Asylum in 1808, he wrote and directed a play about the death of Jean-Paul Marat, a radical during the French Revolution. While Weiss’ work was set in the bathhouse of Charenton Asylum, Thauberger’s 2012 production is staged in the decommissioned laundry facilities in Bohnice, the largest mental health clinic in the Czech Republic.

This complex and multi-layered film critiques institutions of thought, politics and health, and their inherent hierarchies that perpetuate inequities. Thauberger’s collaborators for this piece include the Prague-based experimental theater company Akanda, theatrical director Melanie Rada, the patients and staff at the hospital and a general audience. The resulting piece layers the practices of film, documentary and theater as it blurs the boundaries between fact and fiction.

Cinematographically accomplished frames that attest to Thauberger’s adept skills as a filmmaker contrast unpolished sequences that blatantly expose the presence of technicians, musicians and audience members. By including footage of the reactions of patients, which vary from calm observation, distressed hand-wringing and improvised dancing, the artist emphasizes the multiplicity of perspectives on the complex issues addressed in the film.

The play opens with the actors simultaneously assuming the roles of mentally ill patients and historical figures, dancing onto the stage like a frenzied circus troupe. This cuts away to clips introducing staff and patients who provide commentary throughout the piece. At key points in the production, the interview clips continue in voiceover as the film audience views the play, which competes for sound. The resulting bilingual cacophony is emphasized by the necessary English or Czech subtitles, and at times both.

In Scene 6-Stifled Unrest, the sentiments of a French bourgeoisie character are echoed by commentary from a Czech orderly who speaks of his foolish expectation that the 1989 revolution would amend the deficits imposed by communism. A sentiment of frustrated disappointment is reinforced when the character of Marat later states: “We invented the revolution but we didn’t know how to run it,” suggesting that the energy required to realize a successful social movement is rarely followed by the implementation of a cohesive alternative.

Other points in the play are similarly complemented by the words of hospital staff, who identify challenges within the systems that respond to mental illness. They recognize that ill-considered institutions lead to and maintain sickness. In the context of the play, this sentiment is applied to corrupt political organizations. In this way, Thauberger identifies recurring, systemic problems that arise from both social movements and political (in)stability. She reveals institutionalized ideas and ways of thinking by giving voice to the dissident hospital staff working to affect change, meanwhile enabling the participation of patients—vulnerable people who rely on, but are disempowered by a deficient system.