May 8-11, 2008





Presenting Sponsors: UBC Dept of Psychiatry, UBC Institute of Mental Health, Pacific Cinematheque
Media Sponsor: Channel M
Co—sponsors: Vancouver Coastal Health Authority; Mood Disorders Association of BC; Amnesty International Canada — Pacific Regional Office; Ending Relationship Abuse Society of BC; Chinese Mental Health Program, Canadian Mental Health Association; Vancouver—Burnaby Branch and the UBC Dept of Psychiatry Cross—Cultural Psychiatry Program; S.U.C.C.E.S.S.; MOSAIC.
Wednesday, April 16 – 7:30pm
Canada 2007. Director: John Zaritsky
Post-screening discussion with Dr. Romayne Gallagher and director John Zaritsky.
The Dignitas organization in Zurich, Switzerland, is the only place in the world where citizens from any country can come to receive assistance in committing suicide. Asserting that the choice to end one’s life is a basic human right, Dignitas founder Ludwig Minelli has indirectly assisted in the suicides of more than 500 people from more than 40 countries.
Wednesday, March 19 – 7:30pm
Israel 2006. Director: Dror Shaul
Post-screening discussion with Dr. Harry Karlinsky
Co-sponsored by the Vancouver International Jewish Film Festival.
On a kibbutz in southern Israel in the 1970s, 12-year-old Dvir Avni enters his bar mitzvah year with the knowledge that his dearly-loved mother Miri is mentally ill. When Stephan, Miri’s Swiss boyfriend, comes to visit, he captures Dvir’s heart and makes Miri happier than she’s been in years.
Wednesday, February 20, 2008 – 7:30pm
USA 2005. Director: Lauren Greenfield
Introduced by Jenny Barley
Post-screening discussion with Dr. Samantha Kelleher
Co-sponsored by Specialized Eating Disorders Services, Providence
Health Care – St. Paul ‘s Hospital and Medical Students for Mental
Health Awareness.
Our society’s preoccupation with body image is reflected in the fact that, at any given time, 70 percent of women and 35 percent of men are dieting. More seriously, a 1993 Statistics Canada survey reported that, among women aged 15 to 25, 1 to 2 percent have anorexia and 3 to 5 percent have bulimia. Eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of all mental illnesses, with 10 to 20 percent eventually dying from complications.
Vancouver Premiere! Wednesday, January 16, 2008 – 7:30pm
USA 2007. Director: Dan Klores
Post-screening discussion with Kathleen Mackay and Dr. Harry Stefanakis
Co-sponsored by Domestic Violence Programs at Vancouver General Hospital and Providence Health Care
Landing soundly in the truth-is-stranger-than-fiction realm, Crazy Love is the astonishing story of an obsessive roller-coaster relationship that first dominated newspaper headlines in the United States almost 50 years ago. When successful 32-year-old attorney Burt Pugach met the naïve and beautiful 21-year-old Linda Riss, theirs was a whirlwind romance that was the apex of 1950s high style. Unfortunately, Burt was also hiding a long-suffering wife and a disabled daughter.
Wednesday, December 19, 2007 – 7:30pm
Canada 2007. Director: Gillian Hrankowski
Post-screening discussion with Dr. Paul Termansen, M.D., F.R.C.P.C and director Gillian Hrankowski.
Co-sponsored by Vancouver Coastal Health North Shore Community Psychiatric Services.
On the surface, Mike, Erin, and Martha appear to have little in common, but all live under the shadow of bipolar disorder (once known as manic depression), a complex mental illness marked by significant disturbances in mood. Mike is a charismatic young man whose partying lifestyle and abuse of recreational drugs foreshadow a severe manic episode that has him committed to a psychiatric ward.
Wednesday, November 21, 2007 – 7:30pm
USA 2003. Director: Patty Jenkins
Post-screening discussion with Dr. Stephen Hart
Co-sponsored by the Medical Legal Society of British Columbia.
Charlize Theron won the Best Actress Oscar for her fearless portrayal of notorious serial murderer Aileen Wuornos, who was executed in Florida in 2002 after being convicted of killing six men over a nine month period. Wuornos confessed to seven murders, including that of a policeman, but claimed to have killed only in self-defence.
Wednesday, October 17, 2008 – 7:30pm
USA 2006. Director: Eric Steele
Post-screening discussion with Terry Smith
Co-sponsored by the Crisis Intervention and Suicide Prevention Centre of British Columbia and SAFER (VCHA).
A 2003 New Yorker article entitled “Jumpers: The Fatal Grandeur of the Golden Gate Bridge” declared San Francisco’s iconic monument the most favoured suicide destination in the world. Filmmaker Eric Steele cites the article as the inspiration for The Bridge, a documentary intended, he says, to “peer into the darkest corners of the human mind and challenge us to think and talk about suicide in profoundly different ways.”
Wednesday, September 19, 2007 – 7:30pm
USA 2005. Director: Susan Stern
Post-screening discussion with Dr. Michael Myers
Is it ever rational to choose death? Is it ever a good decision? For 77-year-old Bob Stern, there is little doubt. A successful businessman, husband, and father, an exemplar of the self-made generation that built post-war America, Bob believes that taking his own life in the face of serious, possibly terminal, illness is what an all-American hero should do.
Wednesday, August 15 – 7:30 pm
Zelig (USA 1983) preceded by Get the Script to Woody Allen (USA 2003)
Post-screening discussion with Dr. Harry Karlinsky
Moderated by Caroline Coutts
Woody Allen’s fictional documentary in the key of Spinal Tap concerns “human chameleon” Leonard Zelig (Allen), a colourless man who becomes a celebrity phenomenon in the 1920s and 30s due to his unique ability to completely change his physical appearance to look like those around him.
Written by and starring Keith Black, Get the Script to Woody Allen is based on an actual incident in which Black, a Brooklyn schoolteacher, tracked down his idol at a Manhattan jazz club and slipped him the script of I Will Survive, a screenplay based on Black’s troubles with women. The famed director took the script, smiled meekly, and trotted off. That was several years ago. Mr. Allen has yet to call.