RD Laing is a divisive and divided figure – a radical leader of 60s counterculture. A guru to some, a cruel alcoholic to others. He was as much fleeing his own demons as he was rushing in to confront those of others.

Luke Fowler’s ALL DIVIDED SELVES is his third film to deal with Laing and his legacy. Laing grew up in the depressed area of Govanhill in Glasgow, within view of the local library – his only source of escape from the reality of this ‘hell-hole’ through imagination, books and learning.

Early in his psychiatric career Laing observed treatment within violent, oppressive mental institutions, noting that doctors rarely spoke with their patients. For 12 months, Laing simply talked to schizophrenic sufferers about their experiences, and soon they were well enough to go home. Their subsequent return to hospital after a short time prompted Laing to extend his research into the place ‘where madness is incubated’ – the home.  Laing uncovered systemic forms of control and oppression within the home, which he translated into a geo-political and sociological context.  This radical approach brought him rapid fame and hastened his descent into opprobrium.

That ALL DIVIDED SELVES has been nominated for this year’s Turner Prize serves to remind us that this isn’t a conventional piece of cinema.  Fowler uses ‘found’ archival footage to construct an experimental documentary which, in a visual form, communicates the depth and complexity of the entire body of work of an eloquent and literary figure.  Through his aesthetic style he mirrors the nature of mental illness and societal reactions to it, challenging a deterministic viewpoint. Documentary conventions are rejected, the film is shorn of narrative and he breathes an openly subjective experience into the film. Fowler brings the elements of the film back to a personal space: the lack of satisfactory treatment for his father propelled his film work and his knowledge of psychiatry.

Like Laing, ALL DIVIDED SELVES is beguiling, shocking, inspiring, frustrating and ultimately flawed. It is a human film about humanity. If we are all divided selves, then Fowler’s film is no exception.

ALL DIVIDED SELVES screens at the Arts Picturehouse at 20.15 on Thursday 20th.