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4th Annual Frames of Mind Mental Health Film Festival

The UBC Department of Psychiatry Continuing Medical Education Program and Pacific Cinematheque present

 

THURSDAY, MAY 10th

Vancouver premiere! Director in attendance!

7:30 pm Film Screening

THE KILLER WITHIN

USA 2006. Director: Macky Alston

2007_Film_Festival_img_1Dr. Bob Bechtel is a seemingly ordinary man in his early seventies‚ a devoted husband and father and a respected psychology professor. But Bechtel has a terrible secret. In 1955, while attending college, he shot and killed fellow student Holmes Strozier. Found not guilty for reasons of insanity, Bechtel was committed to a hospital for the criminally insane and released five years later – in part because Strozier’s parents wrote a letter of forgiveness to the judge. Alston gains intimate access to the Bechtel family as they reveal for the first time their long-held secret to family, friends and colleagues. Was Bechtel a cold, calculating killer, or was he pushed beyond his limits by the taunting and bullying he claimed to have endured as a young man? From the Bechtel family, to the victim’s family, to college alumni, The Killer Within reveals this tragic incident and its ongoing consequences from all perspectives. Colour, DigiBeta. 85 mins.

Post-screening discussion with MACKY ALSTON, whose first film, Family Name, premiered at the 1997 Sundance Film Festival where it won the Freedom of Expression Award and was subsequently nominated for an Emmy. His second film, Questioning Faith: Confessions Of A Seminarian, premiered to critical acclaim at the Full Frame Film Festival and aired nationally on HBO/Cinemax in 2002.

and with DR. ROY O’SHAUGHNESSY, a trained forensic psychiatrist who has practiced for 25 years in B.C. He is a Clinical Professor and Head, Division of Forensic Psychiatry, Dept of Psychiatry, UBC. Dr. O’Shaughnessy is Past President, American Academy Psychiatry and Law; Past President, BC Psychiatric Association; and Past President, BC Medical Legal Society.

FRIDAY, MAY 11th

7:00 pm Film Screening

LE DERNIER DES FOUS (DEMENTED)

France/Belgium 2006. Director: Laurent Achard Cast: Julien Cochelin, Dominique Reymond, Pascal Cervo, Annie Cordy, Fettouma Bouamari

“Laurent Achard’s taut, unsettling feature is not your average French film about rural childhood. Based on “The Last of the Crazy People,” a 1967 novel by Timothy Findlay, Achard’s film is a powerful, atmospheric, distinctly unsettling story of desperation, madness and psychological violence. Eleven-year-old Martin is growing up on an isolated rundown farm, and finding family life cold comfort indeed. His forbidding grandmother rules the roost, his older brother – a frustrated poet – is in the midst of an emotional meltdown, and Maman is the proverbial madwoman in the attic, a terrifying figure living behind locked doors. Without laying on any dramatic rhetoric or expressionist effects, Achard has succeeded in making a film that functions brilliantly as a psychological horror story.” (Jonathan Romney, London Film Festival) Winner, Jean Vigo Prize and Best Directing Award, 2006 Locarno Int’l Film Festival. Colour, 35mm, in French with English subtitles. 95 mins.

preceded by HIDE
Canada 2005. Director: Byron Lamarque (10 mins.)

Post-screening discussion with DR. ROY O’SHAUGHNESSY.

 

9:30 pm Film Screening

WIDE AWAKE

USA 2006. Director: Alan Berliner

2007_Film_Festival_img_9Acclaimed American documentary filmmaker Alan Berliner (The Sweetest Sound, Nobody’s Business) once again uses his own life as a laboratory – this time to explore his lifelong love/hate relationship with insomnia. An idiosyncratic and cinematically innovative essay, the film confronts Berliner’s anguish over his sleeplessness. Incorporating hundreds of archival film clips, consultations with sleep specialists, an overnight stay at a sleep lab, conversations with family members, home movies and dream visualizations – Wide Awake is a cinematically innovative film that pushes at the borders of documentary storytelling. The film ultimately reveals – in ways both hilarious and deeply personal – how sleeplessness has profoundly impacted the delicate relationship between the director’s creative life and family responsibility. “Berliner… has the gift of addressing intimate subjects and making them universal. Nowhere has he done this better than with Wide Awake.” (John Anderson, Variety) Colour, DigiBeta. 79 mins.

Post-screening discussion with DR. JONATHAN A. E. FLEMING, a psychiatrist with a special interest in sleep disorders, particularly the management of chronic insomnia. He is the Co-Director of the Sleep Disorders Program, UBC Hospital and the Associate Head – Education, UBC Dept of Psychiatry.

 

SATURDAY, MAY 12th

2:00 to 4:00 pm Workshop: “THE HIDDEN DOCTORS”

Screening and Panel Discussion of
HEALTH CARE 911: THE PLIGHT OF IMMIGRANT MEDICAL DOCTORS

Canada 2006. Director: Jiyar Gol

Health Care 911 introduces us to some of the 8,000 medically-trained immigrants unable to practice in Canada despite a critical shortage of doctors across the country. Facing the frustration of repeating years of training and competing for scarce residency positions, doctors from Pakistan, Italy, South Africa and elsewhere describe their battle to work as doctors in Canada, a country where currently less than 5% of immigrant medical doctors will ever practice. As immigrant doctors continue to take jobs as security guards and cab drivers, the film probes all sides of the growing problem of health care accessibility in Canada. Colour, DVD. 47 mins.

** Members of the Association of International Medical Doctors of British Columbia may attend for FREE. **

With panelists:
PATRICK COADY, Executive Director, Association of International Medical Doctors of British Columbia.
JIYAR GOL, Kurdish-Canadian documentary filmmaker whose other films include Liberation or Occupation: A Passage Through Iraq and The Emblem of Turkey: The Kurdish Problem .
DR. ALFREDO TURA, a physician trained in Italy and President, Association of International Medical Doctors of British Columbia.

Moderated by DR. HARRY KARLINSKY, Director of Continuing Medical Education and Professional Development, Dept. of Psychiatry, UBC.

 

7:00 pm Film Screening

METHADONIA

USA 2005. Director: Michel Negroponte

The term “methadonia” describes a borderland for recovering heroin addicts on methadone maintenance. Here, innovative addicts have learned to mix their methadone with benzodiazepines (such as Xanax, Klonopin and Valium)

– which enhance their high and keep them stuck in a gray area between addiction and “straightland.” Shot over the course of 18 months, Methadonia profiles a number of addicts who attend the New York Center for Addiction Treatment Services. There’s Millie, with 28 years of drug use behind her, she now counsels a group of addicts in recovery; Bill, a canny ex-teamster who has been on methadone for almost 30 years; and Susie and Eddie, who share the most desperate reason to clean up – a child on the way. Negroponte, whose own sister-in-law died of a heroin overdose, presents recovery as a life-long process, desperately difficult but ultimately worth the fight. “Unflinching …gripping.” (Variety) Colour, DigiBeta. 88 mins.

preceded by PINCH
Canada 2006. Director: Jody Kramer (5 mins.)

Post-screening discussion with DR. LAURENCE HOESCHEN, an addiction medicine physician with over 30 years experience in the addictions field. Currently Dr. Hoeschen is the medical leader for addictions at Richmond Health Services.

 

Vancouver premiere! Director in attendance!

9:30 pm Film Screening

CRACKED NOT BROKEN

Canada 2006. Director: Paul Perrier

Lisa grew up in an upper-middle class family in the tony Toronto neighbourhood of Rosedale. She went to the “right” private school, and made the “right” kind of friends. And yet something still went terribly wrong. Today, at 37, Lisa is an estranged mother of one who prostitutes herself to support her crack habit. As an old childhood friend of the director’s wife, she agreed to speak on camera to Perrier about her life as an addict. The film captures a highly intelligent, articulate woman taking calls from potential johns and injecting crack while talking with incredible frankness to Perrier about the struggles of being in “the game.” Shot in one 45-minute take with a Handycam and a miniscule budget, the film was broadcast on HBO in March, 2007. A sequel, Cracked Wide Open, is now in the works. Colour and b&w, Beta-SP. 53 mins.

preceded by BE MY JUNKIE SHADOW Canada 2002. Director: Kat Kosiancic

A frank, straightforward and honest conversation with seven women living in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, all of them addicted to heroin or cocaine, and some of them sex trade workers. Colour, DVD. 24 mins.

Post-screening discussion with PAUL PERRIER, a Toronto-based filmmaker whose first film, Marymount Again, was a road movie about his high school’s 22nd year reunion. In 2003, Paul was one of only six filmmakers selected by legendary documentary filmmaker Alan King to attend his inaugural “Documentary Studio”.

SUNDAY, MAY 13th

2:00 to 4:30 pm Workshop: MOMMIE DEAREST: Good and Not-So-Good Mothers in the Movies

Mom, that most important, most powerful of all women, is a familiar character in the movies, if not always a favorite. Feature film clips depicting Good Moms and Not-So-Good Moms will be used to help the audience discuss the diverse perspectives and emotions that thoughts of Mom stir within each of us. What makes good Moms good? What makes them bad? How often is our view of Mom (and the filmmaker’s view) simply a distorted projection of our own guilt or other feelings? How do we feel when Moms find redemption and vindication in the movies? Or when they fail to do so?

** In honour of Mother’s Day, all moms may attend for FREE! **

Workshop leader: DR. ROLAND ATKINSON, a professor of psychiatry at the Oregon Health & Science University in Portland. A long time cinephile, he sees and reviews over 200 movies a year, available at his specialized website, www.Psychflix.com.

Introduced by DR. ENDRE KORITAR, psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and President, Western Branch Canadian Psychoanalytic Society & Vancouver Institute of Psychoanalysis.

 

Vancouver premiere!

7:30 pm Film Screening

THE BEALES OF GREY GARDENS

USA 2006. Directors: Albert Maysles, David Maysles, Ian Markiewicz

A love letter to the fans of the original film and to the two women at its heart, The Beales of Grey Gardens is drawn entirely from never-before-seen material from the Maysles archive, all shot between 1973 and 1976. A companion piece to the classic Grey Gardens, this is the unbelievable but true story of Mrs. Edith Bouvier Beale and her daughter Edie, the aunt and first cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Mother and daughter lived as virtual recluses for over twenty years in a decaying mansion known as “Grey Gardens,” a place so far gone that the local authorities threatened to evict them for violating building and sanitation codes. The film is a bittersweet love story, an intimate and transfixing record of the powerful and complex relationship between mother and daughter, and a celebration of two indomitable individualists. And be advised: a montage tribute to Little Edie’s inimitable style and showstopping outfits is not to be missed! Colour, Beta-SP. 90 mins.

Post-screening discussion with DR. ROLAND ATKINSON.

Tickets

Screenings:
Single Bill – Adults: $9.50; Seniors/Students: $8.00
Double Bill – Adults: $11.50; Seniors/Students: $10.00

Workshops:
Adults: $9.50; Seniors/Students: $8.00

Tickets available at the door or online at www.cinematheque.bc.ca
Advance tickets available online only.

All screenings and workshops at
Pacific Cinematheque
1131 Howe Street, Downtown Vancouver

 For more info contact (604) 688-8202 or go to
www.cinematheque.bc.ca