A Monthly Mental Health Film Series
Wednesday, April 17, 2013 – 7:30pm
USA
2012.
Director: Mike Birbiglia
Cast: Mike Birbiglia, Lauren Ambrose, Carol Kane, James Rebhorn, Cristin Milioti
Post screening discussion with Jonathan Fleming.
A smart, neurotic slice-of-life comedy about a struggling stand-up
comedian’s issues with his stalled career, imploding long-term
relationship, and serious sleep dysfunction.
Wednesday, March 20, 2013 – 7:30pm
Denmark 2012. Director: Mads Matthiesen
Cast: Kim Kold, Elsebeth Steentoft, Lamaiporn Hougaard, Allan Mogensen, David Winters
Post-screening discussion with Janet Oakes. Co-sponsored by the Western Branch of the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society.
A shy 38-year-old bodybuilder travels to Thailand to look for love, and encounters fierce opposition from his domineering mother.
Wednesday, February 20, 2013 – 7:30 pm
USA 2012. Directors: Rebecca Schaper, Kyle Tekiela
VANCOUVER
PREMIERE! In 1977, Call Richmond, in his early twenties and only a
few months from college graduation, disappeared from the life of his
upper-middle-class Atlanta family. Over the next 20 years, only the
occasional phone call convinced the family that he was still alive. And
then, suddenly, Call reappeared — homeless, unkempt, and plagued by
paranoid schizophrenia. A Sister’s Call, filmed over the next 14 years, is the story of Call and of his younger sister Rebecca’s struggle to “bring him back to life.”
Wednesday, January 16, 2013 – 7:30pm
The Netherlands 2012. Director: Boudewijn Koole
Cast: Rick Lens, Loek Peters, Cahit Ölmez, Susan Radder, Ricky Koole
VANCOUVER PREMIERE! The Netherlands’ official submission to the upcoming Oscars is this bittersweet tale of Jojo (Rick Lens), a lively 10-year-old boy who escapes the difficulties of his home life through a friendship with a baby jackdaw.
Wednesday, December 19, 2012 – 7:30pm
New Zealand 2011. Director: Justin Pemberton
Post-screening discussion with Dr. Chris Booth and Gwen Haworth.
Growing up as a small-town boy who feels like a girl, Graham sees one solution – to become “Ashleigh”. Shot over six years, this insightful documentary follows her search for acceptance.
Wednesday, November 21, 2012 – 7:30pm
(Stil levend)
Belgium 2011. Director: Nathalie Basteyns
VANCOUVER PREMIERE! A poignant, poetic documentary about lives cut short and hope rediscovered, Still tells the stories of several families coping with the aftermath of suicide. One family lost their son Freek ten years ago. In his early 20s when he took his own life, he was a golden boy with an uncanny resemblance to a young Prince William. Another family lost their daughter Eva only a year before filming began. She was only 25, and a talented photographer. All those telling their stories here experience loss in different and profound ways, but all share the same inability to understand what drove their loved ones to suicide
Wednesday, October 17, 2012 – 7:30pm
Ireland/Germany 2011. Director: Ian Fitzgibbon
Cast: Andy Serkis, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Aisling Loftus, Michael McElhatton, Sharon Horgan, Jessica Schwarz
Fifteen-year-old Donald (Thomas Brodie-Sangster) lives with all the usual teenage concerns: fitting in at school, obsessing about losing his virginity, annoyingly overprotective parents — plus a unique one: he has terminal cancer. A talented artist, Donald withdraws more and more into the fantasy comic-book world he has created in his ever-present sketchbooks.
Post-screening discussion with Dr. Jocelyne Lessard, PhD, RPsych, a psychologist for the oncology service at B.C. Children’s Hospital
Wednesday, September 19, 2012 – 7:30pm
USA 19692011. Directors: Robert M Young, David Grubin [Re-imagined by Nick Young, Zack Young]
Canadian painter William Kurelek (1927-1977) may be best known for his beautiful illustrations of bucolic children’s classics (Who Has Seen the Wind?, A Prairie Boy’s Winter) and his landscapes of Ukrainian-Canadian prairie life, but it is his disturbing early work and difficult upbringing that is the subject of this intriguing documentary.
Wednesday, August 15, 2012 – 7:30pm
USA 2008. Director: Azazel JacobsCast: Matt Boren, Ken Jacobs, Flo Jacobs, Dana Varon, Richard Edson, Piero Arcilesi
The idea for Momma’s Man came to director Azazel Jacobs one morning on a visit to his parents. Waking up to find coffee and cereal waiting for him, Jacobs wondered then why he had ever moved out. His film revolves around the childhood regression of Mikey (Matt Boren), a thirty-something computer programmer with a wife and baby.
Wednesday, July 18, 2012 – 7:30pm
Norway 2001. Director: Petter Naess
Cast: Per Christian Ellefsen, Sven Nordin, Per Christensen, Jorgen Langhelle, Marit Pia Jacobsen
A foreign-film Oscar nominee in 2002, and one of Norway’s highest grossing movies of all time, Elling is a winning Odd Couple comedy with an interesting twist: Felix and Oscar’s Norse counterparts are both outpatients from a state-run mental health facility. Deeply neurotic, 40-year-old Elling (Per Christian Ellefsen) is sent to the facility after his mother’s death. His roommate there is Kjell Bjarne (Sven Nordin), a lumbering gentle giant with two things on his mind: food and sex — despite the fact he’s still a virgin at age 40.