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Absolutely superb. First class documentary making. You shed a brilliant and sensitive light on such an overwhelming and debilitating condition. Terribly sad.

Excellent documentary. I can actually associate with some of it, at least the emotional attachment to possessions which don't even serve a function anymore; the fact that they're mine and that nobody else should touch them. Also the sheer enormity of going through all of your possessions to attempt to filter out what you can bear to let go of.

killer documentary. loved it.

Just... wow.
Only one thing - think of some subtle music.
I've downloaded it. The quality is good, sometimes there is noise (dark shots like 2:40-2:52).
But generaly - really great stories.

Great job! I know someone like this, not quite as bad, but on their way....

I use Firefox browser on a PC. I did notice a slight jump each second on pans and tilts, but otherwise the playback was smooth.

Amazing, powerful piece. Suddenly, most of our lives don't seem so bad.

Great film.

check out my Channel: vimeo.com/channelMPH
There are some older films up there.
I am now using FCP 6 and it works very well.

Fantastic piece. Nice job.

very engaging and informative......I can recognise some of the same traits...in me.......whoa

Great documentary. I've been able to control my buying habits and such over the last 5 years and make a path to a more minimalist lifestyle. Ebay is a savior when it comes to parting with stuff. Receiving a monetary reward for "unpacking" is very therapeutic. I was amazed when the woman said she went back into the trash to fetch something she thought she shouldn't have thrown away. I deeply feel for these people, and it's very brave that they can talk about it on camera.

Good Job.

I cant believe how many people seem to be watching this. Do you mind telling me where you found the film? I'm very curious.
Martin Hampton (director of Possessed and hoarder of information!)

Nice piece very shocking. I now see why my wife does her nut at my ever expanding record collection!

Got the link from getrichslowly.org/blog

Hope to catch some more of these sorts of documentaries.

Wonderful job. I'm a depressed packrat myself, and I felt that you covered the gravity of the problem while still being sympathetic. I particularly identified with the last person, because my messiness also worsened when my mother passed away.

Great video, if a bit scary. I found it from Josh Evnin's blog: josh.ev9.org/weblog/archives/582, I think his readership is pretty large (because he works for ThoughtWorks) so maybe you got a lot of hits from him?

Fantastic work. I got the link from waxy.org/links/.

I know these people because I am one myself....and so is my mother.
I am here if anyone needs to relate or ask question about this issue. I've lived like this for almost my entire lifetime and I am 32 now.This film really helps me in that I don't feel so "Outcasted" and some friends have watched it and suddenly have a new look on me. I do have other issues as well that are related...

Thank you so much for making the film (I wish I was there when u filmed as an aid)
And the director if you'd like more info please feel free to contact me.

Frightening, and very well done. Will definitely show it to my friends. Got the link from metafilter.com

At 14:49 it froze. Annoying. Not your fault Martin. Mine. Not enough RAM space here I'm afraid. And think: On line via usb/via wireless card/router down stairs and a ways a way. I got your link via: TMN. The Morning News. I'm an rss of theirs.
This place I live in. It's a mess too. This video, the things it reminds me of. Can't get rid of it. Emotional attachment. How am I going to clear out my storage place? How am I going to clean and keep clean my rooms? And then, too clean? Yes, important subject. Well done my friend. Well done. Good for you. Well done!!

Great to see syllogomania being acknowledged. Good job.

BTW, the link is up on linkfilter.net

Well done Martin - geat work. I never really thought of how hoarding and disorder could go off the scale. It was sad to see that in two cases you filmed, the hoarding seemed to be linked to grief or depression. I hope the organisations you pointed to can help. Incidentally I happened on your film as someone here in Vimeo liked it.

I found the movie via this blog post today:
mindhacks.com/blog/2008/03/possessed_.html

I've only watched the first 3 minutes, can't wait to watch the rest. Great production quality! And, echoing others, great job portraying the subjects humanely and letting them speak for themselves. I definitely have these tendencies myself, but not the space... most often related to computer and audio equipment. My fiancee has it in relation to books :)

But if I had the space, I definitely would have a hoard!

Wow. Well done. A fascinating glimpse into private worlds in disarray. I'm going to go straighten up my living room now.

Excellent! I look forward to more of your work Mark.

I do hope that some of the people in the documentary are seeking help. If not you, Mark, someone closed to them should try to help them seek emotional support. I'm sure it is partly the crafty film-making and clever editing, but their problems seem to lie deeper than that of hoarding.

(I've come via BoingBoing.)

Thank you. This was disturbing and fascinating. I was interested by how clearly each of these individuals could talk about what they were doing. How self-aware they were in their hoarding (whilst not being happy with it). Somehow this has reinforced to me that my being really quite self-aware about my clutter doesn't actually get rid of it either.

I have been gently and slowly clearing and cleaning things in my flat over the last couple of weeks (prompted by my boyfriend, now ex, moving out). I think I will use this documentary as a springboard to do more. I too have often had dreams over the years of a minimalist bedroom with a curtain blowing freely in the breeze.

I'm going to be thinking about this for a while. (I have felt very strange and malformed w.r.t. the clutter and dirt I live in. It *is* good to know I'm not alone, nor even as "bad" as other people.)

Found you via BoingBoing

Thanks for that. I think that I've always had borderline packrat tendencies, and was distressed to realize that I had almost as many books as the first guy (should I be worried that I found him pretty normal?)
The other three, on the other hand, scared me. And I felt overwhelmingly sorry for them. I hope that they will be able to get help and become happier about who they are.

Wow -- nice job on the film! (I followed a link from boingboing.) My mother is a hoarder, and I've only recently become aware that the mountains of stuff that surround her are, in fact, evidence of an illness and not "just her." It's still shocking to see other houses that look like what I grew up with -- the book guy was especially familiar; unfortunately, so was the lady who kept all the empty bottles. My mother has always said she was "saving" things -- from the landfill, so they could be used later, what have you -- but once in her possession, the stuff just decays until it's unusable, because she has too much to take care of any of it. Thank you so much for allowing the humanity of your subjects to come across, and for spreading awareness without judgement. (And thanks for the links -- I sent 'em to my sister, since we both fight the urge to hoard on a daily basis.) Good work!

Excellent work. I was surprised that most of the people you show were very acute with their descriptions of themselves and their problem. Being self-aware enough to be able to describe their internal motivations, past relationships (especially with parents) and other factors means that these people have been contemplating their issue for a while. I guess that makes sense, since they probably contacted you so that you were able to interview them, but I'm very curious to know how the people processed this and for how long. I find myself really wanting to understand the steps they've been taking from point-of-realization to admittance.

Great piece! I actually followed the link from BoingBoing as well. Also, great work with the type.

Wow. My mother... she does this. It was so hard to live with. I was so relieved when they sold their home. I was always afraid I'd be left to deal with it.

Thank you so much for making this documentary. I am a videographer/editor with this problem. Because I live with a family, my clutter is limited to certain areas of the house, but it's always creeping out. If I lived alone, I'm sure my house would look like what you see in this film. But my wife just keeps carrying the stuff I try to leave around back into my office.

The worst thing for someone with this form of OCD is Amazon and overnight shipping. And the iTunes Music Store. And credit cards.

I didn't know that all of the things I struggle with personally had an underlying thread: OCD. Thanks again for posting this documentary. I am going to call a therapist today and start ridding my life of clutter. Your film helped me understand that I'm not alone, and that there's a way out. By the way, I found your film via boingboing.net. And, as a further aside, it does look amazing. I love the close-up of the man's eyes. That was very moving.

I am intimately familiar with a living situation such as this - it strongly affected my soon-to-be-ex-wife and is, in fact, among the main reasons why we separated a year and a half ago and will soon be divorced. As we see from this brief documentary, knowing that one's hoarding is a serious problem does little to help. In fact, it seems to me that it almost makes things worse because the self overlays all of this highly depressing visual clutter with a tremendous guilt at "one's own weakness" for allowing it to have taken such a hold.

In our home, things kept a sort of equilibrium for quite a long time while we still had room to store things (we tended to collect small things) - but then my wife's mother died. One day not long thereafter (and without asking me if I had an opinion on the matter), my wife rented a moving truck and, with the help of two movers, relocated the entire contents of her mother's house (furniture and all) to our house. Furthermore, my mother-in-law was quite a collector herself. In fact, she had a phrase to refer to any one of the vast number of little collectibles that she would buy: "Hyacinths for the soul". Our home went from very cluttered to well-nigh uninhabitable in a very short period of time; we went from having significant floor space in our home (we actually used to have our band rehearsals there) to navigating ever-narrowing footpaths between ever-growing piles of stuff. At first I was gentle and solicitously concerned, but as time went on and our home became more of a disaster area I became more impatient and more vocal and vehement about dealing with the clutter. It took the joy from our lives and isolated us. We gradually ceased having visitors over (except for a small core of maybe three or four people who knew about the problem), and we completely ceased having strangers over. I managed to live in the whirlwind for two entire years after my mother-in-law's possessions entered it. Finally, I could tolerate it no longer and moved out.

I have been back a few times to gather up a few little things I had left behind but, looking at the house now, my wife's clutter has mushroomed to such an extreme extent that it's impossible to tell that an entire other person and his own collection of clutter once inhabited the space as well. She acknowledges that it's a serious problem but, because of her depression she is unable and/or unwilling to do anything about it. For a very long time, I offered to help her clear it out (or at least start to organize it), but she doesn't want my help - she has to do it all by herself and she's just not yet able to deal with it. I only hope that she can find some help before she accidentally burns the place down. I think that, given her choice, she'd prefer to keep everything but to keep it in some orderly way with vast rooms full of shelving and boxes or something.

If nothing else, having to watch this terrible thing overtake our lives managed to cure my own cluttered tendencies before they got similarly out of control. When I moved out I trashed, sold, or gave away the vast majority of my own collections and I now understand how liberating it can feel to no longer be so "buried in treasures". This last phrase was the name of a useful book on hoarding which I read and then gave to my wife. She read it, admitted that the problems it describes fit her perfectly........ and then went right back to sleep on the couch amidst the mountains of irrelevant wealth which imprison her.

May she soon find peace and contentment.

I believe I've seen this on television, but thank you so much for making it available to download: Having a copy in my film collection is much more gratifying!

Excellent film, Martin. The film looks beautiful, which only enhances the complex subject matter. What type of camera are you shooting on?

Very powerful. I recogize myself here but thankfully have not gotten to this point. My gramma (who raised me) also is here, she was raised during the depression when nothing was thrown away. I can especially relate to the lady who talks about memories being attached to things. I have been working on letting go but still have a lot of work to do. I got the link from the Long Beach freecycle cafe group.

Wow. Incredible film. Great job. So sad. And scary as I look at the few piles of stuff that I have been meaning to get to, but haven't. I saw the link to this film on the apartment therapy website.

Also, I found Robert Moore's post a few above mine very touching and sad. I hope your wife finds peace too.

I have dealt with and am still dealing with a parent who is a hoarder, sometimes I think I should write a book on the experience of moving her into a room of our house and downsizing from an acre of land and 4 bedroom home. Thank you for showing some people who are self aware of the compulsion that drives them to collect material things, and drive away family and freinds

Just watching this gave me the feeling of intense frustration. This link was sent to me by my friend's husband who lives perched on the end of his their bed with his lap top. There isn't any room for him in their apt. She can't part with a friggen paper clip!
This film wouldn't phase her.
Is this a brain dissorder???
Or is it just living in fear of letting go?

Wow
this was really sad to me.


I think I may have cried at some point while watching this.


I want so badly to help these people.


:-(

Brilliant, love the simplicity of the shots in contrast to the complexity of the people. Makes me think of how much stuff we throw out every day, how much can this planet take? Found you on vimeo.

Powerful--stunning--shocking--and terribly terribly sad. Your film has made a real impact on me and I am resolved to respect what I have and to learn what is enough.

paradoxically the footage is as gorgeous as the settings are squalid -- I think this subtly suggests why some psyches might be so attracted to say, empty shampoo bottles. They're beautiful, aren't they?

Beautifully shot and edited. This is a vice that I don't think most people even think about, myself included.

Excellent work.

I seem to run across these types more frequently than most. Perhaps because I'm aware of the potential in myself so I'm super vigilant against it to the point I'm almost rabid about throwing things away. I've seen it take over my brother's life, my mother's life, and two of my girlfriends and it terrifies me so I become kneejerk in the other direction. I've tried to help both my girlfriends clean up, one when she left me as a housesitter, I tried to surprise her by having everything organized and spotless when she returned by ohmygod was she mad at me. I think it even eventually destroyed our relationship even though all I did was clean and not throw anything away except broken plastic pieces and paper trash. I agree with one of the other comments that said a film like this wouldn't phase them. In fact they would even become defensive and more secretive. And I know the compulsion to purchase is in every American. We're always told to buy buy buy. But to hoard takes it one step further and it is a real sickness. Looking at all the mold and dust in that last guy's flat was just too much. It almost made me physically ill to think of living in that filth.

I linked here from Unclutterer. I found this film very moving and troubling. I'm currently trying to change my hoarding habits, and reduce my own clutter, but nothing like this overwhelming scale. Thank you for highlighting this issue