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.

1st Annual Frames of Mind Mental Health Film Festival

May 13th – 16th, 2004

PEOPLE SAY I’M CRAZY
USA, 2003. Director: John Cadigan
This intimate, visual portrait is the first film on schizophrenia to be conceived, photographed and directed by a person with the illness.

CAMOUFLAGE
United Kingdom, 2001. Director: Jonathan Hodgson
An animated film exploring the experience of a child growing up with a parent with schizophrenia.

DONNIE DARKO
USA, 2001. Director: Richard Kelly.
Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Jena Malone, Drew Barrymore, Patrick Swayze, Noah Wyle, Mary McDonnell
Donnie Darko, the debut feature from writer/director Richard Kelly, is part psychological thriller and part science fiction mystery.

SYBIL
USA, 1976. Director: Daniel Petrie
Cast: Sally Field, Joanne Woodward, Brad Davis, Martine Bartlett, Jane Hoffman, William Prince
Almost 30 years have come and gone since the introduction of Sybil to captivated television audiences in 1976, yet it has still to be surpassed as the definitive cinematic treatment on multiple personality disorder.

TITICUT FOLLIES
USA, 1967. Director: Frederick Wiseman
In his first documentary, the father of cinema verité Frederick Wiseman leads us into the MCI-Bridgewater mental institution, a prison-hospital for the criminally insane run by the Massachusetts Department of Corrections

DYING AT GRACE
Canada, 2003. Director: Allan King
Modern society exercises unprecedented ingenuity to extend life and postpone death. In times gone by, the direct experience of watching family or friends die was common; it is much less so today

Festival Director: Dr. Harry Karlinsky

Advisory Committee: Caroline Coutts, Alan Franey, Judy Robertson, Bruce Saunders, Jim Sinclair

Co-Sponsoring Organizations: AstraZeneca, BC Schizophrenia Society, Canadian Mental Health Association – BC Div. & Vancouver/Burnaby Branch, Cineworks Independent Filmmakers Society, Movie Monday, Moving Pictures: Canadian Films on Tour, Praxis Centre for Screenwriters, Progressive Housing Society, Vancouver International FIlm Festival, Videomatica

Media Director: Steve Chow
Program Editor: Caroline Coutts
High School Outreach: Analee Weinberger

Our House

Thursday April 15, 2004 – 7:30pm
USA 2003. Director: Sevan Matossian
Post-screening discussion with: Dr. Robin Friedlander & Dr. Caron Byrne

This cinema verite-style
documentary captures with unflinching honesty a year in the lives of
three unique residents with developmental disorders who live at Sueno
House in Santa Barbara. Laura survived sexual and physical abuse, a
gender transformation, and 10 years in a state hospital. Tim is a
47-year-old alcoholic with cerebral palsy and severe behavioural
problems.

Frames of Mind