''The Sleep Room'' is a 1998 Canadian television movie about experiments on Canadian mental patients that were carried out in the 1950s and 1960s by
Donald Ewen Cameron
Donald Ewen Cameron ( – ) was a Scottish-born psychiatrist. He is largely known today for his central role in unethical medical experiments, and development of psychological and medical torture techniques for the . He served as president of ...
and funded by the
CIA
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian intelligence agency, foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gat ...
miniseries
A miniseries or mini-series is a television series that tells a story in a predetermined, limited number of episodes. "Limited series" is another more recent US term which is sometimes used interchangeably. , the popularity of miniseries format h ...
and is based on the book ''In The Sleep Room: The Story of CIA Brainwashing Experiments in Canada'' by
Anne Collins Anne Collins may refer to:
*Anne Fraser (born 1951), New Zealand politician, also known by her maiden name
*Anne Collins (author), winner of Governor General's Award for English language non-fiction
*Anne Collins (contralto) (1943–2009), British ...
.
The first half of the film details the evolution of Cameron's experiments using a procedure he called psychic driving which included continuous loop taped messages while the patients were under the influence of curare and LSD, as well as intensive electroshock treatments. The second half covers the legal efforts of the patients and their attorneys in the 1980s to obtain a settlement. The film was directed by
Anne Wheeler
Anne Wheeler, OC, (born September 23, 1946) is a Canadian film and television writer, producer, and director.
Biography
Graduating in Mathematics from the University of Alberta she was a computer programmer before traveling abroad. Her years o ...
and starred
Leon Pownall
Leon Pownall (April 26, 1943 – June 2, 2006) was a Welsh Canadian actor and director.
He was born in Wrexham, Wales and moved to Hamilton, Ontario with his family in 1957. He performed at the Stratford Festival during the 1960s and return ...
Donald Moffat
Donald Moffat (26 December 1930 – 20 December 2018) was a British–American actor with a decades-long career in film and stage in the United States. He began his acting career on- and off-Broadway, which included appearances in ''The Wild D ...
,
Diego Matamoros
Diego Matamoros is a Canadian actor who has performed in theatre, television, film, radio, and voice animation, both across Canada and in the United States. In 1998, he won a Gemini award for his performance as Dr. Goldman in CBC Television's min ...
Marina Orsini
Marina Orsini C.M. (born January 4, 1967) is a Canadian actress.
Early life
Orsini was born in Ville-Émard, Montreal, Quebec, Canada to an Italian-Canadian family.
Career
Orsini first had a brief career in modeling in which she participated in ...
. It won several
Gemini award
The Gemini Awards were awards given by the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television between 1986–2011 to recognize the achievements of Canada's television industry. The Gemini Awards are analogous to the Emmy Awards given in the United States ...
Dr. Ewen Cameron, as the head of the Allan Memorial Institute in Quebec, Canada, was interested in the repatterning of the brains of those with mental illnesses. He hypothesized that mental illness could be attributed to learning the wrong responses to situations. Cameron's study aimed to de-pattern the brain into an essentially infantile state, before re-patterning the brain to learn the correct responses to situations. The infantile state included a loss of the ability to speak, walk or control one's bowels and was generally irreversible.
Cameron's primary method of de-patterning the brain was to place patients in a medically induced coma for several weeks at a time, while delivering powerful electric shocks used to further disorient the brain. This effectively wiped the minds and memories of many of his patients and is one of the greatest ethical dilemmas of this study.