May 1
Wednesday, May 16, 2012 - 7:30pm
Canada/Great Britain 2002. Director: David Cronenberg
Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Miranda Richardson, Gabriel Byrne, Lynn Redgrave, John Neville
Post-screening discussion with Dr. Randall F. White.
David Cronenberg’s magnificent, bleak Spider stars Ralph Fiennes in a tour-de-force performance as Dennis Clegg, nicknamed “Spider” during childhood because of a fascination with arachnids. After thirty years in a facility for the mentally ill, he is released to an East End London halfway house, where he receives little care or attention ...
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Apr 2
Wednesday, April 18, 2012 - 7:30pm
USA 1967. Director: Frederick Wiseman
Post-screening discussion with Robert Menzies, a
professor of sociology at Simon Fraser University
In his legendary first documentary, cinéma vérité master Frederick Wiseman leads us into the MCI-Bridgewater mental institution, a prison-hospital for the criminally insane run by the Massachusetts Department of Corrections. Wiseman shows us, without judgment, the incessant abuse of inmates as they are needlessly stripped bare, insulted, herded about, mocked, and taunted.
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Mar 1
Wednesday, March 21, 2012 - 7:30pm
USA 2009. Director: Barbara Schroeder
Post-screening discussion with Dr. Rob Tarzwell
“Talhotblond” was the username of beautiful 18-year-old Jessi, a high-school senior from West Virginia. Jessi met Tommy, a buff, brave 18-year-old soldier (username: marinesniper) in an internet chat room, and the pair stuck up an intense, passionate, two-year on-line affair.
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Jan 30
Wednesday, February 15 - 7:30pm
USA
2006.
Director: Macky Alston
Post-screening discussion with Dr. Roy O'Shaughnessy
Dr. Bob Bechtel, a seemingly ordinary man in his early seventies‚
is a devoted husband and father and a respected psychology professor.
But Bechtel has a terrible secret. One night in 1955, while attending
college, Bechtel shot and killed a fellow student.
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Dec 30
Wednesday, January 18, 2012 - 7:30pm
Sweden
2001.
Director: Bille August
Cast: Sven Wollter, Viveka Seldahl, Reine Brynolfsson, Linda Källgren, Lisa Werlinder
A Song for Martin tells the story of two people late in
life who find sudden, delirious love, and then lose it in one of the
most painful ways possible — to Alzheimer’s disease. Barbara (Viveka
Seldahl), a concert violinist, and Martin (Sven Wollter), a world-famous
conductor and composer, meet for the first time when both are
middle-aged and married to others. They fall profoundly in love and soon
divorce their spouses, marry, and settle down to a joyful shared life
and musical partnership. The signs of Martin’s Alzheimer’s disease are
at first isolated, but their progression is relentless.
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Dec 5
Wednesday December 21, 2011 7:30 pm
USA
2005.
Director: Caveh Zahedi
Cast: Caveh Zahedi, Rebecca Lord, Emily Morse, Amanda Henderson, Olia Natasha
Taking over from Woody Allen as cinema’s resident neurotic
narcissist, Caveh Zahedi turns self-confession into high art with this
self-deprecating and often cringe-worthy troll through his own sexual
obsessions. Zahedi plays “Caveh Zahedi,” a not-so-successful independent
filmmaker whose major relationships have been derailed by his
attraction to prostitutes — and, more to the point, his belief that he
should be brutally honest about it with his girlfriends. Framed as a
wedding-day confessional by Caveh, and shot during Zahedi’s real-life
(third) wedding, the film chronicles our hero’s romantic past.
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Nov 1
Wednesday, November 16, 2011 - 7:30pm
USA 2007. Director: Dan Klores
Co-sponsored by Vancouver Coastal Health Community Mental Health and Addictions.
Landing soundly in the truth-is-stranger-than-fiction realm, Crazy Love is the astonishing story of an obsessive roller-coaster relationship that first dominated newspaper headlines in the United States almost 50 years ago.
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Oct 4
Wednesday October 19, 2011 - 7:30 pm
USA 2006. Director: Stanley Nelson
Post-screening discussion with Dale Beyerstein
The 1960s ushered in nearly two decades of intense social and cultural tumult — change was in the air, revolution on the horizon, and all things seemed possible. Many looked to transcendental meditation, free love, Black Power, or LSD. But for some, Jim Jones, the charismatic and forceful leader of Peoples Temple, offered the perfect balance of spiritual fulfilment and political commitment. Using survivor interviews and archival footage, this documentary tells the story of those who followed Jim Jones into the largest mass suicide/murder in history.
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Sep 1
Wednesday, September 21, 2011 - 7:30pm
USA
2005.
Director: Jeff Feuerzeig
An acclaimed look at indie-rock singer-songwriter and cartoonist Daniel
Johnston, whose life has been marked by wild fluctuations due to his
severe mental illness.
Post-screening discussion with
Luke Meat, Music Coordinator at
CiTR 101.9 FM
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Aug 29
When we launched the Frames of Mind Mental Health Film Series back in September 2002, we had no idea it would one day become one of the longest running film series in Pacific Cinémathèque history. As initially proposed by Dr Harry Karlinsky of the UBC Department of Psychiatry, Frames of Mind was created to promote awareness and education around mental health issues, to address the issue of stigma, to challenge the often erroneous representation of mental illness in media, and to do so using the ubiquitous and highly relatable medium of cinema.
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Aug 29
As we begin our tenth year of the Frames of Mind Mental Health Film Series at the Pacific Cinémathèque, we thought it an appropriate time to look back over the 144 feature-length and short films we’ve presented thus far, and, over the next year, present a selection of some of the most memorable.
The films we’ve chosen to show in this 12-month retrospective are as follows:
The Devil and Daniel Johnston • USA 2005. Director: Jeff Feuerzeig
Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple • USA 2006. Director Stanley Nelson
Crazy Love • USA 2007. Director: Dan Klores
I Am A Sex Addict • USA 2005. Director: Caveh Zahedi
Elling • Norway 2001. Director: Petter Næss
Talhotblond • USA 2009. Director: Barbara
Momma’s Man • USA 2008. Director: Azazel Jacobs
A Song for Martin (En sång för Martin) • Sweden 2001. Director: Bille August
Spider • Canada/Great Britain 2002. Director: David Cronenberg
Titicut Follies • USA 1967. Director: Frederick Wiseman
Young Freud in Gaza • Sweden 2008. Directors: PeÅ Holmquist, Suzanne Khardalian
The Killer Within • USA 2006. Director: Macky Alston
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Jun 30
For Better or For Worse
Two classics of American cinema that illuminate the darker corners of marriage and family life
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) and A Woman Under the Influence (1974) are remarkable films that pushed boundaries in their time and
have retained their power to emotionally connect with an audience. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) and A Woman Under the Influence
(1974) are remarkable films that pushed boundaries in their time and
have retained their power to emotionally connect with an audience. Both
films are centred in the domestic sphere and show couples at war with
each other — both needing and hating simultaneously. In these films,
both men and women struggle with the roles society has imposed — but it
is the women, with fewer choices available to them, who suffer the most.
Martha, from Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, is
the very clever, college-educated daughter of the president of the
school at which her husband is an associate professor. In a time when it
was very rare for women to have careers of their own, all Martha’s
hopes and dreams, her very identity, centre on her husband - and he has
proved a great disappointment to her. Mabel, from A Woman Under the Influence,
also looks to her husband for her identity, asking him to tell her
“what” to be, insisting she’ll “be anything” he wants. Unsure of her
abilities as a wife or mother, Mabel tries to enforce a scenario of
happiness — one that is as paper-thin as her sense of self. As the
couples in these two films come together and fall apart, we are left
with a new appreciation of the depths to which love can take us.
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Jun 28
Wednesday, July 20, 2011 - 7:30pm
USA
1966.
Director: Mike Nichols
Cast: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Sandy Dennis, George Segal
Post-screening discussion with Michael van den Bos
This
controversial and groundbreaking film follows a booze-soaked evening of
domestic blisslessness that culminates with the brutal exposing of
long-held illusions.
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Jun 27
Wednesday, August 17, 2011 - 7:30pm
USA
1974.
Director: John Cassavetes
Cast: Gena Rowlands, Peter Falk, Fred Draper, Lady Rowlands, Katherine Cassavetes
Post-screening discussion with Michael van den Bos
A classic of American cinema and a hard-hitting look at the difficulties
faced by contemporary women, Cassavetes’s self-distributed film earned
two Academy Award nominations.
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Jun 1
Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - 7:30pm
Canada
2010.
Director: Daniel Grou aka Podz
Cast: Robert Naylor, Claude Legault, Martin Dubreuil, Eugénie Beaudry, Blaise Tardif
Post-screening discussants: Karla Braber, Dr. Marlene M. Moretti, Dr. Chris Booth
This gritty slice of documentary-style social realism tells the story of
Tommy, who at age 10 ½ is already considered a hopeless case by
Quebec’s youth protection system.
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12-5-2011
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9-1-2011
8-29-2011