opium - diary of a madwoman

Director: János SzászCinematography: Tibor Máté

Production design: Tibor LázárConcept Art and Design: Géza Szöllősi

The movie Opium is set in a mental institution and it is about an affair between a morphine addict doctor and one of his patients. My task was to design machinery that could have possibly been used by doc-tors to assess and cure mental diseases in the 1912 in a women’s asy-lum. They wanted me to make devices that seem authentic yet fictional to give the movie a dark atmosphere.For example there was this scene in the script were Gizella, the main character, a mad women who is claimed to be possessed by the devil gets a “cold water treatment.” Out of a hoist a tank and a straight jack-et I made a machine that the doctor uses to calm down the hysterical patient. I wanted to create something heavy. A visual, which seemed medically and historically accurate but was still fictional enough. Look-ing back at the machineries of the ‘20s, it looks staged since technol-ogy developed so fast in the past 80 years. The equipment I described previously was a fusion of the ideas of Henry Houdini, the famous escape artist’s water torture tank and the Japanese bondage. Beside the fact that it looks real, the objects also have an effect on the view-er’s subconscious. It puts more emphasis on the fact that psychology and technology was so backward in those days compared to how it is now and that people believed that insanity was a curable disease of the brain instead of what it truly is. Moral treatment was the most popular form of therapy. Patients were tortured and that sadistic view is also hidden in the objects.

Participated in the preparation of my plans:Photography by Tamás Dobos, Krisztián Volmuth, Katalin MészárosProps by György Katus, Zsolt Bödöcs, Boglárka Virág, Noémi Csergő,Györgya Karaiand calligraphy by Zsuzsa Szász-Benczúr

Medical exam room (cinematography: Tibor Máté)

Medical exam room (cinematography: Tibor Máté)

Face collection of personality types

Gizella as a phrenological statue (Sculpures: György Katus, Krisztián Volmuth)

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Hidro theraphy set (plan was inspirated by Houdini and the photographer Araki...)

Hidro theraphy set (cinematography: Tibor Máté)

Women faces - psychological test

Force feeding chair (re-design)

Safety kugl to mentally ill people

Ride practice maschine

Octo theraphy set

Hipnosis wheel

Huge zootrope with 100 frames for animation

Diary of a Madwoman (calligraphy by Zsuzsa Szász-Beczúr)

Zootropes

Tatoo

Diary of a Madwoman (calligraphy by Zsuzsa Szász-Beczúr)

Shock set

Model of brain

Models of craniometry

Full-length patients card

Paper set - full-length patients card

General woman measuring set

Hidro theraphy setIron box, scut...

Strait jacket (construction details and making: Noémi Csergő)

Spinning machine

Spinning machine

Graphic design: web site

Diaries (calligrapher: Zsuzsa Szász-enczúr)