A Monthly Mental Health Film Series
Thursday, May 15, 2003 – 7:30 pm
ITALY/FRANCE, 2001. Director: Nanni Moretti
A post-screening discussion with Dr. Michael Myer
Co-sponsored by The Compassionate Friends
Nanni Moretti’s extraordinary drama The Son’s Room, which won the Palme D’Or at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival, tells the deeply affecting story of a tight-knit, middle-class Italian family having to come to terms with a devastating loss.
Thursday, April 17, 2003 – 7:30pm
USA, 2002. Director: Mark Samels
Post-screening discussion with Dr. William MacEwan
Co-sponsored by the BC Schizophrenia Society
A
Brilliant Madness is the story of a mathematical genius whose career
was cut short by a descent into madness. At the age of 30, John Nash, a
stunningly original and famously eccentric MIT mathematician, suddenly
began claiming that aliens were communicating with him and that he was
a special messenger.
Thursday, March 20, 2003 – 7:30pm
USA, 1993. Director: Peter Weir
Post-screening discussion with Dr. Steven Taylor.
Co-sponsored by the Anxiety Disorders Association of B.C.
Director Peter Weir earned
well-deserved critical acclaim for this underrated drama. Weir’s subtle
use of visual symbolism imparts a mystical overtone to what is
essentially a psychological character study of a man who survives an
airplane crash
Thursday, February 20, 2003 – 7:30 pm
USA, 1998. Director: Susan Stern
A post-screening discussion with Karen Dias MA(cand), DipC, RPC.
Co-sponsored by Awareness & Networking Around Disordered Eating (ANAD)
The Barbie doll is not just the world’s most popular toy, she’s a Rorschach test, revealing attitudes about sexuality, body image, gender roles and creativity in an increasingly mass-produced world. Journeying from Barbie conventions to anti-Barbie demonstrations, from girls’ play dates to Barbie web pages, Barbie Nation plumbs the cult of the Barbie doll, telling the Barbie stories of men, women and children.
Thursday, January 16, 2003 – 7:30pm
USA, 1994. Director: Deborah Hoffmann
Post-screening discussion with Dr. Martha Lou Donnelly
Co-sponsored by the Alzheimer Society of B.C.
With
profound insight and surprising levity, Complaints of a Dutiful
Daughter chronicles the various stages of a mother’s Alzheimer’s
disease and the evolution of a daughter’s response to the illness. As
the illness and film progress, the desire to cure the incurable gives
way to an acceptance which is finally liberating for both daughter and
mother.
Thursday, December 19, 2002 – 7:30pm
USA, 2001. Directors: Bill Lichtenstein, June Peoples
Post-screening discussion with members from the Coast Foundation Society
Co-sponsored by the Coast Foundation Society
An award-winning documentary that follows the lives of four people with serious mental illness over a three year period. The film is set at Fountain House, a rehabilitation program for people with serious mental illness located in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen.
Thursday, November 21, 7:30 pm
USA, 2000. Director: Darren Aronofsky
Post-screening discussion with Mr. Dean Wilson
Co-sponsored by the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU)
The
follow-up to his darkly brilliant debut “PI”, director Darren
Aronofsky’s second feature is a jaw-droppingly cinematic deconstruction
of addiction. Adapted from Hubert Selby’s 1968 novel, this is a
visceral and unflinching dissection of addiction.
Thursday, October 17, 2002 – 7:30pm
Great Britain 1971. Director: Ken Loach
Post-screening discussion with Dr. Derryck Smith
Co-sponsored by f.o.r.c.e. Society For Kids’ Mental Health
A landmark film within the British realist cinematic tradition from Ken Loach (“Riff-Raff ”, “Raining Stones”, “Ladybird, Ladybird,” “Land and Freedom”), the celebrated director best known for the socially conscious humanity that permeates his work. “Family Life” is a politically charged and emotionally affecting drama (written by David Mercer, based on his play, “In Two Minds”) about Janice (Sandy Ratcliffe), an emotionally fragile teenage girl who finds herself at the centre of a raging battle of wills between her strict and unsympathetic parents and the indifferent state medical system charged with treating her.
Thursday September 19, 2002 – 7:30pm
USA 1996. Director: Kenneth Rosenberg
Post-screening discussion with Dr. Kenneth Rosenberg
Live theatrical performance by Victoria Maxwell
Co-sponsored by the Canadian Mental Health Association – BC Division
“Back From Madness” follows four psychiatric patients for one to two years, from the time of their first arrival at the Erich Lindemann Mental Health Center, an affiliate of Massachusetts General Hospital. The film contextualizes their present-day treatments with rare archival footage demonstrating how their conditions were treated in the past