Ash (noun): the residue that remains after disintegration, or the acronym for Texas’s Austin State Hospital, once known as the State Lunatic Asylum. In this moody, experimental film, perfectly composed images of graffiti-riddled stairwells, rippled windowpanes, and crumbling plaster walls make the hospital’s abandoned wing seem frozen in time. However, subtle movements suggest that vestiges of life linger in the building’s decaying spaces: shadows dance across the peeling paint and dusty ceiling fans turn in the breeze. These rooms, now vacant, are haunted by the memories of the patients who once inhabited them. Their stories materialize via an eerily impersonal recitation of doctors’ logs. In conjuring up the remnants of lives burned by illness and clinical indifference, this arresting film transforms the nineteenth-century building into a ghostly memorial to the souls once locked, lost, and forgotten within its walls.  TW