MORROW — The Georgia Archives Lunch & Learn presentation, “Central State Hospital: An Oral History,” by Joe Windish is scheduled Friday, April 12 from noon to 1 p.m. at the Georgia Archives, 5800 Jonesboro Road, Morrow.
The presentation is free and no registration is required.
The documentary “Central State Hospital: An Oral History” tells the story of what was once the largest mental institution in the world.
Located in Milledgeville, at its peak in the 1950s, it served more than 15,000 patients in 200 buildings on 2,000 acres of land.
The documentary looks at Central State, from its founding in 1842 to the announced closing in 2010, through a series of interviews with former patients, employees, academics and Milledgeville residents.
Windish will share short excerpts focusing on the courts, immigration, prisons and homelessness in order to explore how each of the different challenges the hospital faced remains just as salient today.
“The story of Central State Hospital is more than just a story about a hospital; it is the complicated and troubling story of psychiatric care in America,” a press release from the Georgia Archives stated.
Windish has been a visual media professional for more than four decades.
A graduate of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, his senior film won a student Academy Award.
He was a producer on WNYC’s 1983 television program “Our Time with Vito Russo.”
He spent 12 years as the director of a not-for-profit community television corporation that included six production locations, three television studios and transmission facilities for three cable television channels.
In 1999, he joined Mediapolis, a web engineering and development company in New York’s Silicon Alley.
At Mediapolis, he served as a senior producer and project manager overseeing projects for companies including Sony Records, Johnson and Johnson and The New York Times Company.
He also managed The New York Times company-owned interactive advertising network, serving 7 million ad units monthly across eight affiliated sites.
He moved to Milledgeville and in 2004 opened the Interactive Media Lab in Georgia College and State University’s Ina Dillard Russell Library.
He went on to serve as the library’s associate director for Technology & Operations before leaving to move to Atlanta in 2018.
He completed the script, graphics, and edited the “Central State Hospital Oral History” documentary project, 10 years in the making, in 2021.
His current work includes independent video, motion graphics, and digital photo restoration projects.
For more information about the Georgia Archives, visit http://www.georgiaarchives.org/.
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