Crooked Beauty is a poetic documentary that chronicles artist-activist Jacks McNamara's transformative journey from childhood abuse to psych ward inpatient to pioneering mental health advocacy. It is an intimate portrait of her intense personal quest to live with courage and dignity, and a powerful critique of standard psychiatric treatments. Poignant testimonials connect the fissures and fault lines of human nature to the unstable topography and mercurial weather patterns of the San Francisco Bay Area. Crooked Beauty reshapes mental health stigmas through a new healing culture and political model for living with madness as a tool of creativity, inspiration and hope.

Chronic is an experimental narrative about a young woman who began mutilating herself as a girl to cope with a traumatic mid-western childhood. The lush optically-printed scenes take Gretchen’s point of view from her punk youth, a stay in a mental hospital, and her release into the big city. Scripted scenes are inter-spliced with documentary and found footage, illustrating the culture Gretchen lives in, her inner world and relationships from her birth to her final day.

Gordon Ball's films have been acclaimed for their originality, their powerful directness. As filmmaker Stan Brakhage has written of Ball's two works on the death of his mother and the death of his father, he "has accomplished something unique in the autobGordon Ball's films have been acclaimed for their originality, their powerful directness. As filmmaker Stan Brakhage has written of Ball's two works on the death of his mother and the death of his father, he "has accomplished something unique in the autobiographical genre of motion pictures. " Jonas Mekas declared Ball's Mexican Jail Footage "the best jail film I've seen"; of the same movie Robert Frank exclaimed "I can't forget this film."

2009 Library of Congress National Film Registry inductee and 1989 Sundance winner by Pat O'Neill. Includes the extra track Easyout.