Georgia Archives Program To Highlight History Of Central State Hospital | News

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…