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Mother

Belgium/Netherlands 2019 / Director: Kristof Bilsen / 82 min

Streaming June 10, 2021 (Thursday)  – June 16, 2021 (Wednesday)

A radical achievement: a love letter to loss, sacrifice and yearning. It questions how we care for elderly loved ones, and makes provocative contrasts between east and west in the economics of medicine … This is intimate observational documentary-making of a high standard.”

Charlie Phillips, The Guardian

Free Virtual Screening

Vancouver premiere! Researching caregiving solutions for his own ailing mother led Belgian filmmaker Kristof Bilsen to Baan Kamlangchay, a residential facility in northern Thailand providing affordable 24-hour care to Europeans with Alzheimer’s disease. Working there is Pomm, a mother of three young children whose heartfelt bonds with the elderly women in her care obscure a difficult truth: living at the facility separates her from her own family, who live many hours away. (Pomm’s video diaries of her infrequent trips to visit her kids are heartbreaking.) Intertwined with Pomm’s story is that of Maya, a 57-year-old Swiss woman with early-onset Alzheimer’s. Unable to properly care for her, Maya’s husband and three daughters have made the difficult decision to take her to Baan Kamlangchay (for ​a holiday,” they will tell her). The dramatic convergence of these two narrative strands illuminates with great poignancy how the economics of inequality shape our lives as much as the ravages of time and disease.

The Cinematheque is pleased to join with the UBC Department of Psychiatry and the Institute of Mental Health in presenting Frames of Mind, a monthly event utilizing film to promote professional and community education on issues pertaining to mental health and illness.

The virtual screening link will go live on June 10.

Virtual access to a film is provided for seven days, at the conclusion of which we present an online seminar featuring conversations with special guests and an audience Q&A via Zoom.

Free Live Q&A


June 16 (Wednesday) 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm PDT

Register for a free ticket to watch the film and receive an invite to the free live Zoom Q&A with Dr. Elisabeth Drance, a geriatric psychiatrist with the Dementia Caregiver Resilience Clinic at St. Paul’s Hospital; Dr. Lillian Hung, Registered Nurse and Assistant Professor, UBC School of Nursing; Peter McKnight, attorney, ethicist and journalist; and Dr. MaryLou Harrigan, health care consultant and educator.

Moderated by Dr. Harry Karlinsky, Clinical Professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of British Columbia.

A laurel made not only to the mother and all the mothers, but also to all those who cared for and said last farewells to loved ones.”

Mateusz Tarwacki, Eye For Film

Acknowledgments

Co-sponsored by UBC Community Engagement and Providence Health Care

 

Speaker Bios

Dr. Elisabeth Drance is a geriatric psychiatrist who has been involved with the Dementia Caregiver Resilience Clinic at St Paul’s Hospital since its inception in 2017. She is an advocate for culture change in long-term residential care from an institutional to a person/family/relationship-centered model of care.

Dr. Lillian Hung is an Assistant Professor in the School of Nursing at UBC and President of the Gerontological Nurses Association of British Columbia. Her research investigates how technology and environment impact the care experiences of persons with dementia.

Peter McKnight is a lawyer, ethicist, and journalist, a faculty affiliate at Neuroethics Canada (an interdisciplinary research group in UBC’s Faculty of Medicine), and a former adjunct professor in SFU’s School of Criminology. He speaks frequently on issues at the intersection of law, ethics, and medicine.

Dr. MaryLou Harrigan is an educator, consultant, and researcher in health care, all supporting a continuous dialogue on aging. Her work includes the development of educational programs and publications in the areas of quality improvement, elder care dynamics, dementia, and ethics.