In the opening scene of his new documentary about the former Norwich Hospital, Steven DePolito enters the decrepit, Pondview Building, the old employees’ residence hall where he once lived during his tenure as a licensed clinical social worker at Norwich Hospital.

He records his visceral reaction to the shattered glass, peeled paint, graffiti, decaying furniture and walls during that visit on April 23, 2022.

“This used to be my room,” he says on camera, flashlight in his hand. “Look at what they did to my (expletive bleeped out) room.” Two more bleeped out profanities follow. “Sad. I have a lot of good memories of this place.”

DePolito acknowledged he could have reshot the scenes and removed the profanity, but he wanted his raw emotions to show through as he opened his new 40-minute documentary, “Lipstick on the Pig: Rethinking the Legacy of Norwich State Hospital.”

The documentary will air for the first time on Norwich Comcast Cable Public Access Channel 14 and live stream on the Community Media Studios website at 6 p.m. Monday, Nov. 25 and Tuesday, Nov. 26. It will be rebroadcast at 6 p.m. on Mondays and Tuesdays in December. The film will also be available on DePolito’s YouTube channel.

DePolito said he got the name for the documentary from a comment by a reader on a Day story about Norwich Hospital. One commenter wrote a disparaging remark about the hospital. DePolito responded with a comment defending the hospital, and someone else wrote: “You can’t put a dress on that pig,” DePolito recalled.

DePolito said he thought, “No, you can’t, but ‘Lipstick on a Pig’ would be a good title for a film.”

DePolito, 65, a retired licensed clinical social worker with masters’ degrees in social work and human relations, learned his filmmaking skills at the Comcast public access studio, using the cable company’s equipment. When he and his wife, Sharri, moved to Florida a few years ago, DePolito bought his own equipment.

Although he owns the film, DePolito felt obligated to premier the film on Comcast in recognition of how he got started through the public access service.

In the film, DePolito presented interviews and information from documents and clips from his previous 2006 documentary, “Brewster’s Neck: Memories of Norwich Hospital,” to examine the history of the former psychiatric residential institution that straddled the Norwich-Preston border.

DePolito worked with two authors of books on Norwich Hospital. Christine Rockledge wrote “More Patience, Less Patients,” published in 2013, and the photo series book, “Images of America: Norwich State Hospital,” published in 2018. Julianne Mangin is author of “Secrets of the Asylum. Norwich State Hospital and My Family,” published in 2023.

The two authors brought to DePolitito a combination of their painstaking research on the history of the hospital and poignant personal and family stories. These trace the construction, operation, the extreme and later debunked treatment methods that were used, the progression to more comprehensive treatments, and finally, the sudden closure ordered by former Gov. John Rowland in the mid-1990s.

DePolito also interviewed best-selling author Wally Lamb, who had family ties to the hospital and explored mental illness in his book, “She’s Come Undone.”

Longtime Preston resident Kevin Thibeault, who had access to the grounds for historical research for about 10 years, was a major contributor as well.

Those who appear in the documentary voiced visceral objections to the view of Norwich Hospital as a horror scene, subject of endless ghost hunter and paranormal shows and online posts.

DePolito abhorred the idea floated a couple years ago to create a “Destination Fear” haunted museum with overnight stays in one of the remaining Norwich Hospital buildings in Norwich. Most of the buildings were in Preston but they have been torn down

Norwich Director of Inspections Dan Coley said he made it clear to proponents of that concept that the buildings are condemned, unsafe and dangerous. Coley drives by the hospital property daily and stops whenever he sees a vehicle parked or people walking on the grounds to warn them away.

In an interview last week, Rockledge said she likes to stop and look at the buildings from the edge of Route 12. She said a Norwich police officer approached her and also warned her to stay off the property. She said she welcomed the intervention, as she too objects to the ghost-hunter culture.

“I think Steve did a fabulous job with the film,” Rockledge said. “He far exceeded my expectations. I love the message it gets across. It touches on how people are just so fascinated with ghosts and haunted asylums. … He touched on my disdain for the whole haunted asylum thing.”

c.bessette@theday.com