Cine-Psych fest probes mental illness through movies
Has there ever been a subject so cartoonishly distorted by the movies as severe mental illness, whose face - in our Hollywood-tempered portrait - is covered with a goalie mask, whose hand is holding a meat cleaver and whose self is a cracked mirror of multiple personalities?
The irony is that there may be no popular tool with more potential to help us properly understand mental health/illness than the movies and visual communication/storytelling. This is a driving idea behind the Cine-Psych Film Festival that starts Aug. 31 in Hamilton.
An additional irony is that, contrary to what you might surmise from watching mainstream movies, people who suffer from psychoses are far more likely to be the victims of violence than the perpetrators.
I learn this insight from Dr. Nadeem Akhtar, psychiatrist and psychiatry/neurosciences professor at McMaster, who also happens to have a graduate degree in film from Central Film School in London, England. He is the founder of Cine-Psych Film Festival, which began in 2017.
This year's edition is the first since COVID interrupted the festival's progress, and as in the past it features not only such wide release movies as 2009's Fish Tank," which screens Aug. 31, 2020's The Father" (starring Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Colman) and 2000's Requiem for a Dream" (starring Ellen Burstyn) but also shorts produced by Akhtar and his students.
The project started in 2017 with (his class of) psychiatric trainees and we wanted to make films," says Akhtar. We wanted a different educational experience. How can we put our message into film?"
It originated, he explains, as part of an anti-stigma campaign" with the idea that words and literature can get the point across but animating those words and ideas with visual story has a more enduring impact.
What they have achieved is remarkable. Powerful movies, made in some cases with budgets of less than $1,000, by psychiatric students (with Akhtar himself usually working the camera), which have been shown at film festivals and have actually won prizes at them. They have made both documentaries and fiction, but mostly fiction. All of it is informed by people with lived experience of the conditions addressed in the films.
This year the Cine-Psych team is showing their latest two - The Week/END" and Can I Help You?" - as part of the festival, which stretches from Aug. 31 to Nov. 30, all screenings taking place at The Westdale.
The Week/END" and Can I Help You?" are showing at The Westdale on Oct. 26, starting at 7 p.m. and will be sandwiched around an actual live theatrical performance, also produced by the Cine-Psych team, called The Break Room."
The Oct. 26 program will be introduced by Akhtar and will also feature a related poetry reading by poet Matthew MacArthur and a panel discussion after with panellists Dr. Kim Ng (resident psychiatrist; Cine-Psych team member); Dr. Kathy MacDonald; Ann Fudge Schormans; Meera Jhaveri.
Akhtar says it is interesting that the pandemic has forced us to confront our resources of resilience" and our tendencies to catastrophize."
Still, issues of mental health and illness have always been with us and as such have always been a central theme of movies.
Fish Tank," the first entry in this year's festival, centres on Mia who is, says Akhtar, an intersection of various oppressions. She is young, female and low income. There is the trauma of vulnerability."
The Father," which screens on Sept. 28, 7 p.m., deals with dementia.
Requiem for a Dream," which screens Nov. 30, 7 p.m., deals with substance abuse and addiction issues.
The Westdale is at 1014 King St. W. in Hamilton and admission to all films is $5. The festival is co-sponsored by McMaster University's Department of Psychology and Behavioural Neurosciences, the McMaster Department of Social Work and several other partners.
Jeff Mahoney is a Hamilton-based reporter and columnist covering culture and lifestyle stories, commentary and humour for The Spectator.jmahoney@thespec.com