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Slaves of the Lord (Avdei Hashem)

Thursday, March 17, 2005 – 7:30 pm
Israel 2002. Director: Hadar Friedlich
Post-screening discussion with Rabbi Philip Bregman and Dr. Steve Taylor

In a Jewish Orthodox village in Israel, Tamar – a twelve year old girl – prepares for her Bat-Mitzva (Confirmation), which will take place on Passover. She becomes convinced that she is impure and grows increasingly scared and depressed. She forces herself into an endless ritual of cleaning, while attempting to silence her unyielding whispering inner obsessional thoughts which detail every inch of her relentless guilt, over and over again.

Knife in the Head (Messer Im Kopf)

Thurday, February 17, 2005 – 7:30 pm
West Germany 1978. Director: Reinhard Hauff
Post-screening discussion with Dr. Robert Stowe
Co-sponsored by the UBC Dept of Psychiatry Neuropsychiatry Program and the Lower Mainland Brain Injury Association

A disturbing and suspenseful film, “Knife in the Head” examines the
catastrophic effects on one man of being caught in the wrong place at
the wrong time. Dr. Berthold Hoffman (Bruno Ganz) is a leading
biogeneticist, married to his work and disinterested in politics. One
night he goes to meet his estranged wife at the youth centre where she
works.

A Song for Martin (En Sång För Martin)

Thursday, January 20, 2005 – 7:30 pm
Sweden 2001. Director: Bille August
Co-sponsored by the Richmond Mental Health Services Older Adult Team and the Consulate General of Sweden in Vancouver.

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.

Crumb

Thursday, December 16, 2004 – 7:30pm
USA 1994. Director: Terry Zwigoff
Co-sponsored by the Mood Disorders Association of BC and The Comicshop.

This is an important but painful to watch documentary that will likely have at least some viewers protesting “Too Much Information.” Robert Crumb is a now famous underground artist/cartoonist whose achievements include founding ‘Zap Comix’, creating the ‘Keep on Trucking’ logo and the Fritz the Cat character (but not its derivative and world’s first X-rated animated feature), and drawing the Cheap Thrills LP cover.

Empathy

Thursday, November 18, 2004 – 7:30 pm
USA 2003. Director: Amie Siegel

Empathy is a multilayered film that is part documentary and part fiction. Interspersed with interviews with three psychoanalysts (all, and likely not coincidentally, older white males), is the fictional depiction of an actress named Lia (Gigi Buffington) in psychoanalysis as well as the screen tests of actresses auditioning for the role of Lia. Co-sponsored by the Western Branch of the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society

The Eight Day (Le Huitieme Jour)

Thursday, October 21, 2004 – 7:30 pm
France/Belgium/UK 1996. Director: Jaco Van Dormael
Post-screening discussion with Dr. Robin Friedlander
Co-sponsored by the BC Association for Mental Health in
Developmental Disability, Down Syndrome Research Foundation, &
Lower Mainland Down Syndrome Society.

The plot of ‘The Eighth Day’ is sentimental, straight forward and perhaps a little well worn.
Georges – an unsophisticated and happy character (played by Pascal
Duquenne) teaches Harry, a complex and unhappy character (played by
Daniel Auteuil) how to embrace simplicity and freedom. However the film
transcends its conventional story line on two levels. Pascal Duquenne
is a professional actor in Belgium who just happens to have Down’s
Syndrome.

I Shot Andy Warhol

Thursday, September 16, 2004 – 7:30pm
USA, 1996. Director: Mary Harron
Post-screening discussion with Dr. Oliver Robinow

This film is a provocative dramatic interpretation of events in the
life of Valerie Solanas – the feminist who really did shoot Andy Warhol
in 1968. Although Warhol survived another two decades, it is reported
he never fully emotionally recovered from his near-death experience.
The film is remarkable for its devastating and convincing portrait of
the subculture that surrounded Warhol as well as its accurate gritty
characterization of Solanas as she descends into insanity.

Let There Be Light

Thursday August 16, 2004 – 7:30 pm
USA, 1946. Director: John Huston
Post-screening discussion with Ramon Kubicek

In 1945, the US military was concerned that prejudice was hindering the reintegration into the work force of soldiers who had returned from the war suffering from mental illness. They instructed John Huston, a Captain in the U.S. Army’s Signal Corp-based film unit and one of the most eminent directors in their ranks, to make a film combating this problem.

Shock Corridor

Thursday July 15, 2004 – 7:30pm
USA, 1963. Director: Samuel Fuller
Post-screening discussion with Ramon Kubicek writer

Independent film auteur Samuel Fuller’s overwrought and sensational
Shock Corridor has been described as perhaps the best B-movie ever
made. Peter Breck stars as Johnny Barrett, a newspaper reporter who
decides to impersonate a sexually perverted insane man in order to have
himself committed to a San Francisco asylum, the site of an unsolved
recent murder.

 

The Venus of Willendorf (La Venere di Willendorf)

Thursday June 17, 2004 – 7:30pm
Italy, 1997. Director: Elisabetta Lodoli
Post-screening discussion with Cynthia Johnston

The earliest known representation of a human, a woman, is the so-called
“Venus” of Willendorf, a small statue found near the town of Willendorf
in Austria with a bulging, pear-like body, large pendulous breasts,
ample abdomen, and prominent vulva. Not surprisingly, this Venus of
Willendorf, Elisabetta Lodoli’s feature debut, tackles a subject
infrequently depicted in film: bulimia.