Thursday, November 9, 7:30 PM

RWM Opening Night Gala - It’s A Mad Mad World!

It’s A Mad Mad World! is a candid look at life as a continuum presenting the radical notion that we are all more or less a little mad. In her direct address to the camera in Pretty Broken, Chantal Kreviazuk defiantly interrogates society’s preconceptions of mood disorder, inviting viewers to consider how our deep-seated attitudes towards others diagnosed with mental health illnesses are part in parcel of the problem. Madsen’s Kira’s Reason: A Love Story is a moving drama of the testimony of love and acceptance in the health and recovery of people living with mental illness. In an effort to confront the stigmatization of mental illness, It’s A Mad Mad World! aims to disrupt the very foundation of normalcy that we all sometimes cling to. 

Pretty Broken

Cline Mayo
Canada / 2006 / 11 min / DVD

Pretty Broken is Canadian chanteuse Kreviazuk’s first screenplay. In a powerful meditation on mental illness, Kreviazuk delivers a convincing monologue, bravely inhabiting the role of a woman living with a mood disorder. Alone in a psychiatric ward, she muses over questions of social stigma, perception, and acceptance, and wonders who is truly mad - herself or society. top
                 

En Kærlighedshistorie (Kira’s Reason: A Love Story

Ole Christian Madsen
Denmark / 2001 / 92 min / DigiBeta
Danish with English subtitles

Kira’s Reason: A Love Story is the twenty-first entry into the Dogme canon; a group of films made according to strict guidelines that include such ordinances as the use of natural light and sound, hand-held camera, and non-genre storytelling. The stripped down Dogme aesthetic has the magical quality of keeping reality real while making it seem strange and new.
An intimate two-character study of husband and wife, Kira’s Reason is as much about Mads, Kira’s adoring husband, as it is about Kira, his mentally disturbed wife.  The story begins as Kira (Stine Stengade) returns home from a psychiatric clinic to her two young sons and husband Mads (Lars Mikkelsen). Soon, their love for one another is put to the test. At home, the recalcitrant Kira struggles to find herself again in her marriage, believing her husband has had an affair, and as a mother, wrestling with the affected propriety of parenting. Acutely aware of her madness, Kira knows she will never be the person she was before. Kira’s Reason:  A Love Story is compelling and unpredictable.

Special guest Chantal Kreviazuk in attendance.

Ticketholders are invited to the Opening Night Gala party after the screening and panel discussion.

Gala Party Musical Guest

JUSTIN NOZUKA: the Toronto-based singer-songwriter has been playing on acoustic guitar the past year for intimate audiences, showcasing his debut full-length album, Holly, due out this fall. Now, with recent opening slots for Ziggy Marley, Sam Roberts and The Philosopher Kings, he is poised to build his fan base one person at a time, impressing audiences with his engaging personality, ear-bending lyrics and a rugged soulful voice.

Two songs in particular truly stun the listener into wondering how someone still in his teens can spin such imaginative tales. “Criminal,” an acoustic rock song, could easily become a massive teen anthem, while “Save Him” chronicles the binding love of a two-faced couple.

Born in New York, the 18 year-old moved to Canada at age 8. He learned to play guitar at the age of 12 and soon began writing his own songs. He has a year left before he graduates from the Etobicoke School of Arts. He plays in public as often as possible: club gigs, festivals, colleges, anywhere he can. Says Nozuka: “I want to start touring, gaining experience playing in places other than Toronto. I want to see what the vibe is like.”

Friday, November 10, 7:30 PM

Queer Madness

Co-presented with Inside Out
An annual program, Queer Madness continues to probe the intersections of sexuality, identity, mental health, and addiction. Challenging and engaging, the films in this program highlight the intrinsic relationship between our bodies and knowledge of ourselves, foregrounding important questions of justice, human rights, and freedom. Contains disturbing content. Viewer discretion is advised.

A L’ombre (In The Dark)

Simon Lavoie
Canada / 2006 / 20 min / 35 mm

French with English subtitles

A mother, imprisoned for life in jail, struggles to maintain her fragile relationship with her young son through infrequent visits and problematic telephone calls. Filmed on location in the Correctional Service of Canada Joliette Institution, a women’s prison east of Montréal, In The Dark is an intimate observation of the isolation and challenges facing mothers in prison. 

Cruel And Unusual

Janet Baus, Dant Hunt and Reid Williams
USA / 2006 / 66 min / Beta SP

Cruel And Unusual is an unflinching look at the lives of transgender women incarcerated in men’s prisons in the United States. Ashley, Linda, Anna, and Ophelia’s stories of rape, violence and denial of hormonal and psychological treatment challenge our most basic notions of gender and justice. Trapped in male bodies in men’s prisons, the transgender women in this revealing documentary provide irrefutable proof of the inequitable definitions of gender and sexuality. The pathological resistance to change on the part of bureaucratic institutions of power like prisons that decide where to place inmates based on their genitalia, not their gender identity. 
Audience Award for Best Feature, New Fest 2006; Jury Award for Best Documentary, Frameline 2006.

Toronto premiere.

Filmmakers in attendance.

Please join us for the Queer Madness party after the screening and panel discussion.
Goodhandy’s 120 Church Street at 9:30 PM. Free with screening ticket, or cover charge at the door
 

Saturday, November 11, 1:30 PM

Where There Is Love There Is Life: A Family Program
                                                                     Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)

Where There Is Love There Is Life celebrates the resilience of children who struggle with loss and mental illness. This program of three Canadian shorts and a foreign feature presentation offers a hopeful portrait of such serious subjects as children caring for a mentally ill parent and also experiencing extreme anxiety. Themes like the power of forgiveness, the imagination, and of self-knowledge are introduced as tools for personal growth and survival in this mix of narrative drama and animation, which children and parents alike will find educational and entertaining. Rated PG.

Prayer For A Good Day

Zoë Leigh Hopkins
Canada / 2003 / 13 min / Beta SP

A young girl living alone with a father, numb with depression offers daily prayers for good days to come and break the monotony of their lonely family life. Her understanding of her father’s mental health deepens as she grows older, and as a young woman, she develops the ability to make good days happen though the gift of compassion.

Prayer For A Good Day had its world premiere at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival. Zoë is Heiltsuk from Bella Bella and Mohawk from Six Nations.

Pinch

Jody Kramer
Canada / 2006 / 5 min / Beta SP

With bold lines and humour Pinch deals with chronic conditions, and our fascination with the things that do us harm. The film is a cartoon meditation on the perimeters of self-love and loathing.

Thunderstorm

Adam Garnet Jones
Canada / 2005 / 3 min / Beta SP

“I have a secret, and no one else knows. I have a secret, and it's mine, and one day everyone will know, and they'll be sorry.” Thunderstorm is a bittersweet animation about the director's experience as a distressed child who discovers the power of imagination as a vital tool for survival in a world that often fails the expectations of dreams. Having your head in the clouds is not such a bad place to be after all.

Knetter (Bonkers)

Martin Koolhoven
The Netherlands / 2005 / 83 min / DVD

Dutch with English subtitles
“With a mother like that, you have to think for yourself.” Nine-year-old Bonnie’s grandmother is suddenly no longer around to manage their unusual little family. Heeding her grandmother’s advice is exactly what Bonnie tries to do when she is left alone with a mother who is barely able to look after herself, let alone a young girl. Hiding her mother’s illness from Youth Services becomes a full-time job for young Bonnie, until the lonely woman who lives next door unexpectedly offers to help. With a surprising twist, Bonkers revels in the themes of love and loyalty, showing us that families come in all stripes and having an elephant in one’s backyard is not at all out of the realm of possibility.

Toronto premiere.

Filmmakers in attendance.

Saturday, November 11, 7:30 PM

Larger Than Life

Divine inspirations. Visions and voices. Gods and Godiva, Larger Than Life is an open-ended exploration of alternative states of being where the conscious mind encounters the unconscious psyche. The opening two short metaphysical musings on the state of humankind, Mr. Happy and Logos, set the stage for the visually stunning, Infinite Dream and The Alma Drawings, which submit mesmerizing landscapes of the imagination. The program challenges our conventional understandings of awareness and psychosis. Larger Than Life is a solicitous observation of the mysteries of faith, the collective unconscious, and of divine intervention. Rated PG.

Mr. Happy

Michael P. O’Hara
Canada / 2005 / 3 min / Beta SP

Mr. Happy is an original black comic parable about an obsession with fear. Inspired by today’s media obsession with fear-based news, O’Hara gives us Mr. Happy, the wild doomsdayer with bug-eyed passion, bent on sharing his doomsday message with every uninterested pedestrian he meets.

Logos

Henry B. Benvenuti
Canada / 2006 / 5 min / DVD

The director’s use of repetitive phrases were inspired by the second and third century words of Nag Hammadi’s Gospel of Thomas. These words (logos), according to Benvenuti, mirror the deepest part of the human psyche, helping us to understand the mental health problems that are so common in today’s puzzling world of material illusions.

Rêve Infini (Infinite Dream)

Nigel Hunt
Canada / 2006 / 5 min / Beta SP
French with English subtitles

A homeless woman wanders the streets of Toronto, and beds down next to a statue of the Virgin Mary. This chance encounter sends her on a midnight journey through the city, an epiphany and a transformation. Starring soprano Measha Brueggergosman. Supported by Bravo!FACT.

The Alma Drawings

Jeremiah Munce
Canada / 2004 / 47 min / Beta SP

The Alma Drawings immerses us in an intense visual journey, exploring the automatic artwork of a Northern Ontario recluse. Alma Rumball produced thousands of wildly intricate drawings and claimed that a force made her hand move to make the detailed line work, exotic faces, and psychedelic patterning. The drawings tell stories of Joan of Arc, the Holy Ghost, Atlantis; Tibetan deities stare out from the page. She claimed no authorship of her works; the drawings have apparently emerged separate from her consciousness. Come celebrate Alma’s life and art, and revel in the divine mysteries of the mind.

Best Direction, Hot Docs 2005.

Filmmakers in attendance.
Everyone is invited to THE GROUP - VISUAL ARTISTS OF RWM 2000-2005 Exhibit Opening at it’s not a deli, 986 Queen Street West 9:00 PM

Original pieces by Alma Rumball will be on display at Workman Theatre, 1001 Queen Street West from Saturday, November 11 – Saturday, November 18.

 

Sunday, November 12, 1:30 PM

Hell’s Half Acre

Hell’s Half Acre, an axiom meaning “frustrating trip.” It refers to an irregular piece of terrain in Idaho that is very difficult to navigate. So named because its cracks, holes, and crags give the area an otherworldly, surreal, and perhaps hellish appearance. Both a trip and a place of entrapment, the face of addiction is like this precarious and forbidding environment. The two films in this program each present sobering stories of addiction, one to alcohol, the other to crack. Depicts scenes of substance abuse, and contains coarse language and mature themes. Viewer discretion is advised.

Blackout

Maximilian Erlenwein
Germany / 2005 / 30 min / Beta SP
German with English subtitles

Blackout tells the story of Tom, a sensitive well-known musician in the Berlin music scene who becomes aggressive and even violent when he drinks. Unable to control his anger, Tom leaves a string of tested and ruined relationships. 

Best German Short Film, Berlin Film Festival 2005.

Cracked Not Broken

Paul Perrier
Canada / 2006 / 53 min / Beta SP

Cracked Not Broken is about Lisa. Lisa is a crack addict. She is also a prostitute. She turns tricks to support her addiction. Lisa is also from the affluent Toronto neighbourhood of Rosedale. As an educated upper class white woman with a privileged private school background, Lisa bears little resemblance, at least on the surface, to the stereotypes of street-entrenched prostitutes and addicts. This truly unique documentary that never started as a film, was shot in one take in a time span of 45 minutes and cost about a total of $30. It challenges our preconceptions and raises significant questions about what, if any, responsibilities are involved in telling the stories of those inhabiting society’s sub-cultures. 

Filmmakers in attendance.

Sunday, November 12, 7:30 PM

Mirror Mirror On The Wall

“Eating disorders are a range of conditions involving an obsession with food, weight and appearance. This obsession negatively affects people's health, relationships and day-to-day living. The two main types of eating disorders are anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa” (The National Eating Disorder Information Centre, Canada).

They can be deadly and frequently perpetuate an insidious culture of secrets and lies. While Cake takes a humorous approach to compulsive eating, we are reminded that more and more boys and men today are being diagnosed with eating disorders. In a personal study of her own body, the director of Touch exposes the vulnerability of the female physique and the courage of the feminine mind. Half Man ½ God takes us deep into one male’s psyche as he deals with racism and narcissism head-on. Finally, the feature presentation Thin is a truly unique documentary taking us into the hearts and institutional home of women with eating disorders.

Cake

Mike Vokins
Canada / 2005 / 4 min / Beta SP

Obsessed with cake, learning Chinese, and his weight, a young man goes for an unforgettable jog.

World premiere.

Touch

Anita Schoepp
Canada / 2004 / 4 min / Beta SP

Touch is a short experimental video that explores the filmmaker’s personal relationship with sensuality and her ability to receive physical affection while surviving post-traumatic stress disorder from a history of sexual violence. The video enables her to safely explore eroticism and broaden her understanding of her sexuality, while sharing it with an audience and exploring the boundaries of objectification and exhibitionism.

Half Man ½ God

Darryl Callender
Canada / 2006 / 10 min / Beta SP

Famous for his beauty and perfect body, Adonis is a man said to be born from the union of a Greek god and a human. According to psychologists, it is this ideal of physical masculine beauty that young males of this decade are trying to emulate through excessive exercise. Half Man ½ God is a chronicle of one man’s struggle with the Adonis complex.

Thin

Lauren Greenfield
USA / 2005 / 103 min / Beta SP

With unprecedented access and an unflinching eye, Thin offers an emotional journey through the world of eating disorders. Filmed over a six-month period at the Renfrew Center, a residential facility for the treatment of eating disorders in South Florida, Thin focuses on four women struggling with anorexia and bulimia as well as the institution that is their home, investigating the process of treatment, the culture of rehab, the cycle of addiction, and the unique relationships, rules and rituals that define everyday life within the centre.

Filmmakers in attendance.

Monday, November 13, 1:30 PM

Direct Evidence 2

Co-presented with LIFT

For the second year running, LIFT (Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto) and Workman Arts’ Rendezvous with Madness Film Festival continue their partnership in providing Workman Arts members the opportunity to make their own short films. Having explored analog animation in 2005, this year’s students worked with Super 8 film and with the digital technology of the Media 100, focusing on the basic elements of camera theory, along with shooting and directorial considerations.
Course instructor, Shenaz Baksh has been the Workshop Coordinator at LIFT for over three years where she organizes the seasonal workshops and provides technical support for independent film projects.
Direct Evidence 2 opens with an experimental short from Mexico.

Microfatalmia (Microphthalmia)

Andrea Robles and Adriana Bravo
Mexico / 2005 / 6 min / Beta SP

This animation dives into the daily world of Benjamin who was born with brain malformation and suffers from periods of insomnia and nervous breakdowns as a result. He also has microphthalmia, a physical condition in which his eyes are proportionally smaller, and has developed an acute pleasure for sound. The sound track was constructed with sounds made by Benjamin playing his favourite instruments. The sounds are intended to reflect Benjamin’s emotional states, and the images are an attempt by the directors to interpret Benjamin’s perceptions and sensations.

You Me & The Trees Baby!

T. K. Workman
Canada / 2006 / 4 min / Beta SP

You Me & The Trees Baby! is a last ditch effort to speak for trees particularly the ones that will be coming down on CAMH grounds. Mourning our loss of them, through creative drumming, strumming, editing and shooting film, this experimental film is an effort to give back to the trees what they give us over the endless smog of Toronto: breath, connections to the earth, and a sense of protection from the ravages of the sun. 

It's Eating Me Up!

Lee Sjostrom
Canada / 2006 / 5 min / Beta SP

Death rates from eating disorders are among the highest for any mental illness. Written, directed, filmed, and edited by a woman who has coped with her own eating disorder from early childhood, this film demonstrates that eating disorders are killers.

Shelter

Chris McKinney
Canada / 2006 / 5 min / Beta SP

Shot in black and white, Shelter is an anonymous look at the homeless problem in Toronto as it relates to mental illness and every individual’s basic need for housing.

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Supposed

Laura Donn
Canada / 2006 / 4 min / Beta SP

A short film about young women and their lives.

Crazy Diamond (Part 1)

Lava (Joseph) Wyciszkiewicz
Canada / 2006 / 5 min / Beta SP

Crazy Diamond (Part 1) is about song writing. In his car, Lavarocky, the director, interviews John (wordman) during visits to CAMH where both men are out patients. This is what we see. What’s missing is how it all started 16 months ago, when Lava met John and introduced him to the music of Pink Floyd’s late singer-songwriter, Syd Barrett.
Inspired to write a Floyd song, John toils at his new craft ten hours a day, five days a week, two hundred hours of listening time a month, plus two CD players. Is he any closer? And did Syd really have schizophrenia?

thank you 

Matthew Christie
Canada / 2006 / 5 min / Beta SP

Filmed in downtown Toronto, in the winter, all alone.

Cans As Coffins

Barbara Mann
Canada / 2006 / 5 min / Beta SP

The idea behind this film grew out of a paradox. Does poverty create mental illness or enhance it? If you are mentally ill should you expect to live in poverty, as a symptom of your diagnosis? Living on the edge, a nerve wracking way to live, worrying about paying bills, putting food purchases on the credit card, including dog food. When the director opens her cupboard she sees cans from the food bank. Tuna and beans of every sort. She stacks boxes of Kraft Dinner in the tub. She puts the beans in soups and shares them with her dog.

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Face On Food

Sarah Hutton
Canada / 2006 / 5 min / Beta SP

Face On Food introduces an organic farmer and takes a peek at his local farmers' market. Local, fresh & friendly!

 

 

Pets n' Pats

Sharon Gant
Canada / 2006 / 5 min / Beta SP

The film Pets n' Pats demonstrates the important relationship between humans and pets, with the aim of strengthening the presence of love and respect in our attitudes and actions towards pets and one another. The film reaffirms the place of animals in human society, emphasizing the essential interconnectedness of all life forms.

Special Screening of Workman Arts Members’ Work

In keeping with Workman Arts’ (WA) commitment to supporting and facilitating WA artists and providing a presentation venue for these new and emerging filmmakers, RWM 2006 presents this mini-program of unjuried work by Workman Arts. 

A Juguar (To Play)

Julio Estany
Cuba / 1980 / 1 min / DVD

Julio Estany was born in October 1960, in Havana, Cuba. He started to do artwork at a very young age inspired by the fascinating world of his father. Following his studies at The Institute of Biological Science, University of Havana, he started working at the National Television Station in the Department of Animation. After a brief period in East Germany, Estany defected to Canada.

 

A Farewell

Lee Sjostrom
Canada / 2006 / 14 min / DVD

A documentary reflection of the director’s video production workshops held at 6 St Joseph House, a Toronto neighbourhood centre for creative enterprise and community learning. A Farewell demonstrates how people with mental health and addiction problems live better when they feel a sense of community. Inter-cutting between workshop footage and interviews with members, this documentary explores the sense of community acquired by the workshop participants and facilitators, and how they developed greater self-esteem as a result of that experience.

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Skills Of The Mind!

George Warner II
Canada / 2006 / 20 min / DVD

George’s personal experience with severe depression and resulting dependence on medication, have increased his awareness of decision-making and correlated conclusions. George uses the game of billiards to explore the mind of the decision-maker, the process of making decisions, and the associated pressures, especially under extreme and often debilitating circumstances. 

Filmmakers in attendance.

Ticketholders are invited to the Direct Evidence 2 Filmmaker Reception after the screening and panel discussion at it’s not a deli, 986 Queen Street West at 3:00 PM

 

Monday, November 13, 6:45 PM

Chaos Theory

Curated by Kathleen Mullen

Finding order in disorder - from daily routines, to surviving a death, to balancing Tourette’s with everyday life and A.D.D. with family responsibilities - all of these artists find their own self-therapy survival techniques. Their creative process is intricately and irreversibly linked to their mental health.

Positive Reinforcement Therapy

Michael Stecky
Canada / 2006 / 1 min / Beta SP

Your prescription is in! Face the monitor, maintain eye contact with the therapist and repeat after Chad. This is part of a larger web-based series on creative therapies: Perfectly Normal, Your Video Therapy Dispenser (www.perfectlynormal.ca). Toronto premiere.

Dedication

Kathleen Olmstead
Canada / 2006 / 5 min / Beta SP

In front of the bathroom mirror, a young woman performs her daily ritual while at the same time saying a personal prayer as she readies herself for the day ahead. Exploring the emotional connection between music, repetition and words, the director mixes her own poetry with a score by composer Paul Aucoin.

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Moment Of Silence

CC Sapp
USA / 2005 / 7 min / Beta SP

Sapp lives with Tourette’s. With the support of her family and friends and her own creative work and determination, she finds her way to survive and flourish in her daily life. Toronto premiere.

Escape Velocity

Scott Ligon
USA / 2005 / 28 min / Beta SP

Is A.D.D. a modern mental health issue? Is there so much stimuli around that creative people have trouble filtering the world out? This film explores the connection between A.D.D. and creativity using digital artist Scott Ligon’s own life story as he goes from single to married with children. Toronto premiere.

You Can’t Get There From Here

Liss Platt
Canada / 2005 / 8 min / Beta SP

Sweet 16 is not always so sweet for a pot-smoking, pill-popping lesbian experiencing the death of her sister and the loneliness of coming to terms with her sexuality.

A Girl Named Kai

Kai Ling Xue
Canada / 2005 / 8 min / Beta SP

Kai, through her poetic personal narrative to her Taiwanese parents, explores gender identity, love and her own mental health and self-awareness.

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Magical Thinking

Michael Stecky
Canada / 2005 / 5 min / Beta SP

Magical Thinking is the concept that one’s thoughts or actions have the power to make things happen. A ritual/performance, presented within a multi-frame newscast, reflects a young man’s internal point of view and represents his schizophrenic fragmentary debris of thoughts.

Hypnosis With Music Therapy

Michael Stecky
Canada / 2006 / 4 min / Beta SP

First listen to the sound of the voice, stare into the spiral then sing along to the music, and attempt to relax. This film is a therapy that is part of Perfectly Normal, Your Video Therapy Dispenser (www.perfectlynormal.ca). Toronto premiere.

Filmmakers in attendance.

Monday, November 13, 9:30 PM

Hybrid Hallucinations

Co-presented with Images Festival

Continuing Rendezvous with Madness’ commitment to hosting experimental work, this year’s program honours the concept of hybridity in Hybrid Hallucinations. Mixed origin and composition are the modus operandi of the two films shown here. Hague’s experience with installation works, involving hundreds of watercolour, printed and photographic pieces is evident in Close To Home, a brilliant hot-pink video that almost looks like a 3-D cardboard cut-out. Sanguedolce’s use of hand-coloured images as emotional canvases translates into a different politics of reception for viewers. Depicts scenes of substance abuse and contains coarse language. Viewer discretion is advised.

Close To Home

Libby Hague
Canada / 2006 / 26 min / Beta SP

Close To Home fictionalizes a small town news item of an infanticide. The father shoots his son, then himself. At some point the mother runs from the house. We are asked to imagine what it's like to be the woman who ran away. Uneasy with sensationalized media depictions of family violence, this video focuses more on what we can expect of each other - how our sense of community is predicated on assumptions of decency in others and how we are fascinated and afraid when that expectation is violated. That’s why this revolves around the most basic of obligations - that between parent and child. World premiere.

Dead Time

Steve Sanguedolce
Canada / 2005 / 80 min / 35 mm

Dead Time is a diary-based film that is part drama, part documentary, part experimental. It tells a story of two sisters, Wendy and Julie and their attempts at survival in spite of sexual abuse, excessive drug use and, consequently, desperate criminal behaviour. It’s also the story of the men they become involved with, Mark and Reg. All four players are one careless step away from death through suicide, overdose, or criminal prosecution. In an effort to portray crisis, to unveil the intensely felt subjective realities in his film, Sanguedulce uses hand developed and hand-coloured stocks in addition to the normally processed black and white and colour negative stocks. His attempt to incorporate the hand-coloured images with the protagonists’ internal struggles, to undo the habits of vision, makes Dead Time a visual tour-de-force, and a deeply felt chronicle. 

Filmmakers in attendance.

 

Tuesday, November 14, 1:30 PM

When Loves Hurts

When loves hurts a lot of things break. Focusing on families, relationships, and couples, this program groups together a series of shorts that address the all too painful subject of domestic violence, highlighting notions around innocence, responsibility, courage, and recovery.

Strangers

Asher Goldstein
USA / 2006 / 15 min / Beta SP

A young boy deals with physical abuse at home by losing himself in a world of extraterrestrials.  

Letter to Liza

Jason J. Brown
Canada / 2006 / 7 min / Beta SP

A young woman receives her father’s written response to her plea for haven. This experimental drama places a live actor into the hyper-real environment of a computer generated 3-D Toronto and explores the devastating impact of parental judgment on the fragile psyche of a child. 
Nominated for Best Experimental Film, Female Eye Film Festival 2006.

Lammtromm (Tame Like A Lamb)

Hanno Olderdissen
Germany / 2005 / 12 min / DVD

This meditative drama exposes the desolation of the barren mental institution and of the barren soul of humanity; the naked rooms and the desperate humans are visible in each frame. Everything is the same colour. The patients and the staff seem dull in their action and conduct. Tame Like A Lamb tells the story of the relationship between two men, both captivated by their fears. Mr. Frank, a mental health consumer and resident of a psychiatric hospital cannot overcome the trauma of his childhood. And male nurse Manfred cannot love his fellow man, and therefore cannot love his job. Both men do not find what they are looking for, and we are compelled to wonder: Who is truly sick? North American premiere.

Me-hutch La-me-ta (Outside The Bed)

Einav Bar
Israel / 2006 / 15 min / DVD

What happens to a couple when both partners are struggling with depression? In this quietly paced drama, you can cut the tension with a knife. Almost painful to watch, Outside The Bed is an exposed trial of how to overcome personal trauma that has driven a deep wedge between lovers. North American premiere.

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Look Through My Eyes

Jeffrey Hevert
USA / 2005 / 12 min / DigiBeta

Robert struggles to deal with his younger brother’s mental illness. Jonathan’s aggressive acting out tests the limits of the family’s patience, (and that of the audience), but its Robert’s attitude that may push them all past their breaking points. Intense and touching in its approach, the film reveals the complex dynamics of familial love and acceptance.

Meadowland

Erik Martinson
Canada / 2005 / 16 min / Beta SP

A scrutinizing personal account of domestic violence from the perspective of a brother/uncle. Close to this story by blood and emotion, and incorporating another account of violence with the too familiar end of murder, the video seeks to question gender assignment as an excuse for power, control, and volatility. Pathology of the victim is explored through a frustrating account of degrading legal battles that support continued/systemic abuse.

Mantis

Brendon Foster-Algoo
Canada / 2005 / 29 min / Beta SP

After years of a strained marriage, Adam Merritt and his wife Alice have violently drifted apart. When the turbulence of their differences comes to a head, Adam must decide what is ultimately more important: the lives of his children, or the future of a highly destructive relationship. A dissection into the gendered psychology of the abuser and the abused, social services, and the law, Mantis provides a view into a world of familial disintegration, societal prejudice and a father's shocking and final attempt at redemption.

Filmmakers in attendance.

 

Tuesday, November 14, 7:30 PM

6:30 PM

The CAMH Archives and Friends of the Archives invite you to attend a special on-stage presentation and display, commencing at 6:30 PM, to celebrate the life and work of the late Dr. Jack Griffin, O.C., and launch the Griffin Education and Research Bursary. 

 

Memory Lapse

Co-presentation with The CAMH Archives and Friends of the Archives

In keeping with RWM’s annual historical program, our theme Memory Lapse explores the historical and contemporary cultures of psychoanalysis. Our Time Is Up is a clever take on the assortment of modern woes and what can be done with them when brutal honesty becomes the new therapeutic subterfuge. Hobbs’ bio-pic Memoirs Of My Nervous Illness fictionalizes a seminal case in the history of psychoanalysis - that of Daniel Paul Schreber, whose 1903 account of his own insanity inspired Freud, Jung and Lacan. Rated 14A.

Our Time Is Up

Rob Pearlstein
USA / 2004 / 14 min / DVD

When therapist Dr. Leonard Stern (Kevin Pollak) finds out he has six weeks to live, he adopts a fresh method of treatment: brutal honesty.

Memoirs Of My Nervous Illness

Julian Hobbs
USA / 2006 / 79 min / DigiBeta

Memoirs Of My Nervous Illness is a feature film adaptation of what has been called “perhaps the most revealing dispatch ever received from the far side of madness.” A blend of gothic tale, court procedural, and spiritual awakening, Memoirs Of My Nervous Illness presents a psychological showdown between the divinely inspired Daniel Paul Schreber and his keeper.

Canadian premiere.

Join us after Memory Lapse and the post-screening discussion for a special display, complimentary refreshments and desserts, directly across from CAMH, the Queen Street site, at the Festival Lounge, it’s not a deli 986 Queen Street West.

 

Wednesday, November 15, 1:30 PM

SOS 101

Co-presented with the National Film Board of Canada

This program is dedicated to the art of the intervention. SOS 101 presents two different ways of intervention: one with trained professionals, another with friends and family. What works? What doesn’t? 

Komfortzone (Comfort Zone) 

Hanno Olderdissen
Germany / 2006 / 9 min / Beta SP
German with English subtitles

Help! Bernd suffers from shy bladder syndrome. He can only release his bladder if he is feeling unobserved. But visiting a public bathroom is seldom a solitary experience. Does Bernd need an intervention or should he just be left to his own devices?

The Interventionists: Chronicles of a Mental Health Crisis Team

Katerina Cizek
Canada / 2006 / 30 min / Beta SP

The Interventionists: Chronicles of a Mental Health Crisis Team follows a unique crisis team, Ellen, a mental health nurse, and Brandon, a specially trained police officer, as they respond to 911 police calls involving "emotionally disturbed persons." Together, they peel away at the labels, to get at the underlying causes for the crisis, revealing the complex and often tragic situations faced by people living with mental illness. Directed by Katerina Cizek, produced by Gerry Flahive and executive produced by Silva Basmajian. The Interventionists is an NFB Filmmaker-in-Residence initiative.

World premiere.

HairKuTT

Curtis Elliott
USA / 2006 / 65 min / DVD

Four friends from St. Louis, MO, travel to the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee to a remote mountain cabin. Their plan is to help a friend, Bryant, aka HairKutt Johnson, kick his fifteen-year addiction to heroin. Is this his deathbed, or the springboard to a new life free from the drug that has dominated his life? This reel life documentary is a testimony to the bonds of friendship and to the shackles of addiction, exposing the violence of detoxification and the test of faith endured by HairKuTT and his friends. Depicts scenes of substance abuse. Viewer discretion is advised.

Audience Choice Award for Best Documentary, International Black Film Festival 2006.
Canadian premiere.

Filmmakers in attendance.

 

Wednesday, November 15, 7:30 PM

Mind Maps

Mind Maps speaks to both the physical borders and psychological cartography of places and spaces. Confinement to one is comfort to another. A mind, a body, a room, a ward, a town, or country are shapes that help define how we experience ourselves and the world around us. Mind Maps sheds light on the institutional architecture of a hospital room, as well as on the national geographies defining countries. At the heart of these films are questions of identity politics, and how to unpack the dualisms that predominate Western consciousness - inside/outside/us/them/I/other.

La Batalla De Mexico

Javier Tellez
USA / 2004 / 9 min / DVD

Made in collaboration with patients of the Psychiatric Hospital, San Bernardino Alvarez, in Mexico City, the video documents a fictitious militia made up by patients of the mental institution. Armed with machine guns the patients overtake the hospital wearing camouflage uniforms and sky masks. They wield signs with slogans, staging a protest against the stigmatization and injustices of the mental health system. The Internationale, the anthem of international revolutionary socialism, and one of the most widely recognized songs in the world is used as the soundtrack. Canadian premiere.

Bala Perdida (One Flew Over The Void)

Javier Tellez
USA / 2006 / 12 min / DVD

Is it a bird? A plane? No, it’s a human cannonball flashing a U.S. passport! One Flew Over The Void records an extraordinary event, which Tellez calls "living sculpture," about "dissolving borders" between the United States and Mexico and between mental health patients and the rest of the world. Canadian premiere.

The 4th Dimension

Dave Mazzoni and Tom Mattera
USA / 2006 / 82 min / Beta SP

Visually stunning black and white cinematography, with a somnambulistic tone, this first feature lulls viewers into a Kafkaesque distortion in which the narrative realism and dream states binding the story become almost interchangeable.

Stylistically channelling David Lynch and Darren Aronofsky, The 4th Dimension is a densely etched portrait of a young man's descent into insanity…. Jack, a former child genius now grown into the tentative body of a timid loner of obsessive-compulsive repairs antiques in a small, dark shop.
- Michael Rechtshaffen, The Hollywood Reporter

Simmering with neurotic emotions and surreal dream states, The 4th Dimension…touches subconscious nerves. Pic follows a quiet, introverted young man down an Alice-like rabbit hole of suppressed memories.
- Robert Koehler, Variety
Toronto premiere.

Filmmakers in attendance.

Ticketholders are invited to the Javier Téllez Art Installation Opening & Filmmaker Reception after the screening and panel discussion at it’s not a deli, 986 Queen Street West at 9:45 PM.

 

Thursday, November 16, 1:30 PM

Is There A Method To This Madness?

It doesn’t have to be that way. Or does it? The films in this program present two community-based models for mental health consumer care as alternatives to the traditional mainstream institutional system. In Belgium and in Israel, these films demonstrate how two communities have responded to the need for sustainable health care for mental health survivors. Despite their relative successes and failures viewers will find hope in these alternatives.

Geel (Yellow)

Peter Boeckx
Belgium / 2005 / 52 min / DigiBeta
Dutch with English subtitles

This documentary takes us behind the scenes of Geel, a Belgium city where psychiatric patients are placed in the homes of the people of Geel.  They become members of the hosting families. Yellow tells the stories of three different patients in three different host families, literally welcoming us into the private homes that comprise this unique open system.

North American premiere.

Bereshit (Genesis)     

Oren Yakobovich
Israel / 2005 / 52 min / Beta SP
Hebrew with English subtitles

Genesis tells the story of the establishment of the first and only collective farm founded and run by and for the mentally ill in Israel. Genesis – the farm – was the brainchild of Arieh, the initiator of the project and founder of the first Israeli hostel for the mentally ill. His dream was to develop a kibbutz where mentality ill persons could live, create and work, giving them dignity, purpose, and self-respect. The film recounts the efforts of a small group of individuals over four years to build a community, inviting us into the fragile world of the subjects, each struggling with a different mental illness. We are taken on a personal journey of creating a dream, witnessing the difficult and moving process of the hardships and challenges faced by this group of brave individuals.

North American premiere.

Thursday, November 16, 7:30 PM

All In The Family

Co-presented with Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival

One country. Two communities. These two Canadian documentaries, one from the West the other from the East, present collective experiences of particular issues. In Summer, the filmmaker documents her family’s approach and their coming-together, in order to deal with bi-polar disorder. Similarly, Cottonland, records an entire community’s experience with problems of addiction and dependency, illuminating the conditions under which the addicted person thrives, and raising questions of social responsibility. Depicts scenes of substance abuse. Viewer discretion is advised.

Summer

Dianne Ouellette
Canada / 2006 / 45 min / Beta SP

“In the summer of 2002 my younger sister Allison was admitted to the Weyburn Mental Institution. Later that summer my stepfather Dennis went manic. In the span of one summer two family members were both diagnosed with bipolar disorder.” 
This documentary by Dianne Ouellette is her family’s experience with bipolar disorder – the signs, stages and the healing.

World premiere.

Cottonland

Nance Ackerman
Canada / 2006 / 54 min / Beta SP

When the last of Cape Breton’s once thriving coal mines shut down in the late 1990s, the shrinking population of Glace Bay faced chronic unemployment. While covering the crisis, celebrated photographer Nance Ackerman saw what she describes as the human cost of cultural genocide in a community struggling to come to terms with its loss. Cottonland reveals how easy it is for a social dependency on the state to carry over into a personal dependency on a potent little pill, the prescription painkiller OxyContin. With the collaboration of recovering addict, Eddie Buchanan, the film guides us through a culture of despair. Ackerman analysis is sharp and her film demystifies the world of the addicted person, while showing us the complex social nexus that contributes to such severe dependency. 

 

Friday, November 17, 1:00 PM

Eye of the Storm

Eye of the Storm take us to those hard to be places, real and imagined. A program of sobering shorts that come from the gut. Hold your head up high. Depicts scenes of violence and is not recommended for young children. Viewer discretion is advised. Rated 14A.

Bad Person

Donna Szoke
Canada / 2005 / 2 min / Beta SP

A defiant claymation that pulls no punches offers up an unparalleled string of invectives that would make an English teacher proud. While never obscene it offers some of the nastiest combinations of insults that could be assembled  -including a quote from Shakespeare. Bad Person is based on the observation that there are many synonyms for a bad person, and just a few for a good one. Toronto premiere.

Norman Finds His Heart

Stevie Girard
USA / 2006 / 2 min / Beta SP

Norman Finds His Heart focuses on the miniaturized life of a quirky man named Norman. Norman’s existence is a repetitive cycle of odd behaviour and bizarre routine. In an effort to enhance his life, Norman questions the origins of happiness. Nothing he does brings him peace of mind until he finally realizes that happiness comes from within.

World premiere.

Letter To Liza

Jason J. Brown
Canada / 2006 / 7 min / Beta SP

A young woman receives her father’s written response to her plea for haven. This experimental drama places a live actor into the hyper-real environment of a computer generated 3-D Toronto and explores the devastating impact of parental judgment on the fragile psyche of a child. 

Nominated for Best Experimental Film, Female Eye Film Festival 2006.

The City Eats Its Weak

Australia / 2006 / 15 min / Beta SP

Kay can’t eat. Kay can’t sleep. Kay can’t do anything about the city that slowly consumes the people around him. As Kay suffers from increasing panic attacks, he can’t help but obsess about the thing growing on his chest? World premiere.

Damaged Goods

Don Best
Canada / 2004 / 5 min / 16 mm

A short, non-narrative, experimental animated film combining multiple animation techniques such as back lit sand, hand scratching, rotoscoping, photocopy manipulation and charcoal & paint on newsprint to create tortured celluloid and tertiary hues mirroring a man’s deteriorating state of mind. 

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Can You Love Me?

Sarah Kolasky and Adam Garnet Jones
Canada / 2005 / 10 min / Beta SP

Kolasky and Jones combine film, video, and experimental animation to create a painfully intimate documentary about Toronto artist Morgan Mavis. Can You Love Me? is a seductive exploration of the artist’s narcissism, art, sexual politics, and insatiable need for love.

Look Through My Eyes

Jeffrey Hevert
USA / 2005 / 12 min / DigiBeta

Robert struggles to deal with his younger brother’s mental illness. Jonathan’s aggressive acting out tests the limits of the family’s patience, (and that of the audience), but it’s Robert’s attitude that may push them all past their breaking points. Intense and touching in its approach, the film reveals the complex dynamics of familial love and acceptance.

Usagi

Asa Mori
Canada / 2004 / 4 min / Beta SP

The video consists of four silent animation shorts, originally shot on Super 8 format, showing the navigations of a rabbit-like creature in its environment: heart, memento mori, beauty, and milk. Toronto premiere.

Terra Incognita

Peter Volkart
Switzerland / 2005 / 18 min / Beta SP
German with English subtitles

He was in the headlines for a brief period in the late 1920s: Igor Leschenko, the young physicist from Hermannstadt whose bizarre experiments cast doubt upon the law of gravity. The debacle at the pataphysicist convention leads to a secret expedition to find Nanopol Island at point zero gravity. On a mission to prove his theory right, Leschenko travels through mesmerizing digital landscapes. Terra Incognita is a journey of effects and alter egos that drives Leschenko out of his mind.

Best Swiss Film 2006; Best Short Film, Montréal Film Festival 2005.

Butts Out

Sherief Elkatsha
USA / 2006 / 58 min / Beta SP

Filmmaker Sherief Elkatsha has smoked cigarettes for eleven years, and for eleven years has tried to quit. Frustrated with the endless cycle, he finds comfort in documenting fellow smokers engaged in the same battle. The result? A documentary film following a cast of characters over three years in their difficult and often comical struggles to kick the habit.

Toronto premiere.

Filmmakers in attendance.

Ticketholders are invited to the Taboo Tapestry Filmmaker Reception after the screening and panel discussion

 

Friday, November 17, 7:30 PM

Taboo Tapestry

Co-presentation with the Toronto Jewish Film Festival

What happens when your life is shrouded in a tapestry of silence? When nobody talks about your descent into madness? Does this mystery make you even crazier, or does it make it easier to pretend you’re sane? Is seclusion a result of a diagnosis of mental illness as in the case of the Schulmans, or does it affect an environment of misconceptions as in the case of Arthur Lipsett in Remembering Arthur? Depicts scenes of substance abuse. Viewer discretion is advised.

SchulMania 

Orr Schulman
Israel / 2005 / 21 min / Beta SP
Hebrew with English subtitles

Meet the Schulmans­­ - a psychiatrist father, a disturbed daughter, and a terrified son. Bent on finding some answers to pent up questions, the director interviews family members about their raw family dynamics and the suffered silences around his sister’s schizophrenia. Through a series of candid conversations that take us into their home and the psychiatric hospital in Jerusalem where the director’s sister was frequently admitted, we become witness to the cathartic nature of dialogue as the Schulmans rediscover themselves and one another.

North American premiere.

Remembering Arthur

Martin Lavut
Canada / 2006 / 90 min / DigiBeta

Filmmaker Arthur Lipsett’s close friend, Martin Lavut, documents the influence of the eccentric Oscar®-nominated film genius. The world of cinema tragically lost Lipsett in 1986 when the Montréal-born artist committed suicide two weeks before his 50th birthday. This feature documentary celebrates the life and influence of one of the country’s greatest creative minds, who began his filmmaking career at the National Film Board of Canada.  Remembering Arthur raises important questions about a community’s responsibilities and intervention when the genius like the scientist goes mad - the artist turns eccentric, and the novelist becomes hysterical.

Ticketholders are invited to the TABOO TAPESTRY FILMMAKER RECEPTION after the screening and panel discussion at it’s not a deli, 986 Queen Street West at 9:45 PM.

Encamados                                                             it’s not a deli

Javier Téllez
November 15 –18th

Encamados, 2004 is a video installation made in collaboration with patients of the Psychiatric Hospital Fray Bernardino Alvarez en Mexico City. In this hospital the patients are separated by gender, in facing wards called: Encamados, hombres (Bedridden: male) and Encamados, mujeres (Bedridden: Women). A long rope was made by the patients tying the bed sheets and two teams (males vs. females) pulled from each end of the rope... The Tug-o-War, a popular children's game is used in this context to reveal the specific politics of gender within the psychiatric institution. The installation consists of two video monitors, each displaying a team pulling at the ends of the long rope, and the rope itself. Canadian premiere.

                                                                                                                             
Oedipus Marshal                             
Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art

November 18th – one day only – 12:00 PM to 6:00 PM

Javier Téllez
USA / 2006 / 30 min / DVD

Venezuelan-born and New York-based international artist, Javier Téllez’s videos, sculptures, and performances reflect on the social conditions of psychiatry and institutional dynamics.
Oedipus Marshall is a collaboration between Téllez and members of the Oasis Club House, a psychiatric facility in Grand Junction. The purpose was to create a western film based on Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex. Oedipus Marshall premiered at the Aspen Art Museum in Colorado USA in the spring of 2006. Canadian premiere.

Saturday, November 18, 1:30 PM

Workman Theatre

It’s A Mad Mad World!

It’s A Mad Mad World! is a candid look at life as a continuum presenting the radical notion that we are all more or less a little mad. In her direct address to the camera in Pretty Broken, Chantal Kreviazuk defiantly interrogates society’s preconceptions of mood disorder, inviting viewers to consider how our deep-seated attitudes towards others diagnosed with mental health illnesses are part in parcel of the problem. Madsen’s Kira’s Reason: A Love Story is a moving drama of the testimony of love and acceptance in the health and recovery of people living with mental illness. In an effort to confront the stigmatization of mental illness, It’s A Mad Mad World! aims to disrupt the very foundation of normalcy that we all sometimes cling to. 

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Hannah

Samuel Kiehoon Lee
Canada / 2005 / 16 min / Beta SP

Hannah is a palindrome. A young Korean woman coping with a panic disorder attempts to go out on a blind date. The film is a story told twice: once backwards and again forwards. Hannah is caught in a cycle of panic attacks and prescription medication. She seeks liberty from her mental illness. She seeks liberty from popping "XANAX". She seeks liberty from herself.

Pretty Broken

Cline Mayo
Canada / 2006 / 11 min / DVD

Pretty Broken is Canadian chanteuse Kreviazuk’s first screenplay. In a powerful meditation on mental illness, Kreviazuk delivers a convincing monologue, bravely inhabiting the role of a woman living with a mood disorder. Alone in a psychiatric ward, she muses over questions of social stigma, perception, and acceptance, and wonders who is truly mad - herself or society.

 

En Kærlighedshistorie (Kira’s Reason: A Love Story)

Ole Christian Madsen
Denmark / 2001 / 92 min / DigiBeta
Danish with English subtitles

Kira’s Reason: A Love Story is the twenty-first entry into the Dogme canon; a group of films made according to strict guidelines that include such ordinances as the use of natural light and sound, hand-held camera, and non-genre storytelling. The stripped down Dogme aesthetic has the magical quality of keeping reality real while making it seem strange and new.
An intimate two-character study of husband and wife, Kira’s Reason is as much about Mads, Kira’s adoring husband, as it is about Kira, his mentally disturbed wife.  The story begins as Kira (Stine Stengade) returns home from a psychiatric clinic to her two young sons and husband Mads (Lars Mikkelsen). Soon, their love for one another is put to the test. At home, the recalcitrant Kira struggles to find herself again in her marriage, believing her husband has had an affair, and as a mother, wrestling with the affected propriety of parenting. Acutely aware of her madness, Kira knows she will never be the person she was before. Kira’s Reason:  A Love Story is compelling and unpredictable.

 

Unrequited: A Guy Maddin Retrospective in Three Parts

Co-presented with the Winnipeg Film Group

In 1985 Maddin held his first ever public screening of his very first film, The Dead Father (1985) in a Winnipeg hospital. Twenty-one years later, the Rendezvous with Madness Film Festival welcomes Maddin to the Queen Street site of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Canada’s largest psychiatric institution, to a three-part retrospective to explore his interests in mythological, modern, and purely imaginary illnesses, and the films they have inspired.

Born and raised in Winnipeg, Guy Maddin, directed numerous shorts and nine features, including Brand Upon The Brain!, which played at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival and will play at the Berlin Film Festival later this winter. Other features include The Saddest Music In The World (2003) and the television ballet Dracula – Pages From A Virgin’s Diary, which won an International Emmy for Best Performing Arts Program in 2002. Maddin, who won the prestigious Persistence of Vision Award for lifetime achievement at this year’s San Francisco International Film Festival, and the Telluride Silver Medal for life achievement in film back in 1995, and a U.S. National Film Critics Award for best experimental film for Archangel in 1991 and The Heart Of The World in 2001, is also an author, a free lance film journalist and teacher of film studies at the University of Manitoba.

 

Saturday, November 18, 1:30 PM       MOCCA

Inspired Afflictions: Facts & Mythologies

Maddin’s films are replete with images so peculiar, they can be seen as salient symbols, harkening to an unknown though strangely recognizable time and place. Compact composites of random and purposeful bits and pieces, his films are inspired by the stuff of legend, myth, and history, both social and autobiographical. His fascination with illness, psychological, physical, and even those that don’t exist, drive his narratives.  This program aims to examine the role of Maddin's invented and poeticized illnesses and their significance to post-modern culture.

 

Sombra Dolorosa

Guy Maddin
Canada / 2004 / 6 min / Beta SP

In this Maxi-Mexi-Melancolour short, the widow Paramo attempts to prevent further familial tragedy - her daughter Dolores wants to join her father, the recently deceased Don Paramo, in death - by taking on El Muerto, Death himself, in the wrestling ring. While the widow struggles in the ring with her undefeatable opponent, Dolores jumps into a river to end it all, but is saved by a handsome Samaritan, who brings her to the wrestling auditorium just in time to see a most mystical, death-affirming curiosity. And the sadness just won't stop!

Tales From The Gimli Hospital

Guy Maddin
Canada / 1988 / 72 min / Beta SP

Maddin’s first feature film introduces two men who share a hospital room as patients afflicted with an unknown plague, based on smallpox. Set during an epidemic in the village of Gimli, Manitoba near the turn of the century, Tales From The Gimli Hospital is a dreamlike, elliptical film, which explores the jealousy and madness instilled in two men. Einar (Kyle McCulloch) and Gunnar (Michael Gottli) are friends at first, until they reveal their darkest secrets to each other. Tales of creeping pestilence, unconsummated passions, reckless envy and necrophilia are told, climaxing in a deadly battle between the two patients, now rivals.

 

Saturday, November 18, 4:00 PM      

Workman Theatre, CAMH

Triangle Tales: Maddin On Mad Love 

Everyone always wants or needs something, even when it’s virtually impossible to have it all. Triangle Tales: Maddin On Mad Love attempts to expose desire, or craving for what it is - an irrational urge, something, which springs from the notion that if one's desires are fulfilled it will, of itself, lead to one's lasting happiness or well-being. Such beliefs normally result in further craving/desire and the repeated enactment of activities to bring about the desired results. If this notion strikes you as compulsive, then welcome to Maddin’s world of unrequited love. Depicts scenes of sexual content. Viewer discretion is advised.

Odilon Redon

Guy Maddin
Canada / 1995 / 5 min / Beta SP

Keller, an old sub-aquatic locomotive engineer, and his son Caelum witness a train collision and rescue from its wreckage Berenice, an orphaned pre-adolescent girl-snail. Keller and Caelum adopt Berenice as a member of their family. Keller even names his beloved steam engine after his "daughter". When Berenice reaches puberty, both Keller and Caelum fall in love with her, becoming romantic rivals. A disturbed Berenice runs away to marry a Zepplin pilot, only to be kidnapped by her adoptive father. Keller is blinded in a train mishap. Caelum loses his head and turns into a flower. Berenice turns into a cactus.

Heart Of The World

Guy Maddin
Canada / 2005 / 6 min / 35 mm

Heart Of The World is a clever collage of silent-film tropes in the service of what Maddin calls a "subliminal melodrama." Set in a dystopian future as imagined by a 1920s Soviet filmmaker, the movie is a love story (more precisely, a love triangle) played out against the backdrop of a catastrophic event. Beginning with a montage of introductions, we meet two brothers, Nikolai, a mortician, and Osip, an actor playing Jesus in a Passion Play. Both men are in love with Anna, a state scientist. Anna's conundrum is compounded by her latest scientific discovery: the Earth's heart is failing, and humanity has one day left. Chaos ensues as people prepare for the apocalypse, and as the brothers compete for Anna's love. However, a third man appears, Akmatov, an industrialist. As riots and orgies break out, Anna falls under the spell of the capitalist, oblivious to the world's tumult. Finally, she comes to her senses and frees herself from the industrialist's grip, and with the heart of the world about to stop beating, Anna devises a radical remedy that leads to the Earth's rescue, and a rousing climax.
This frantically paced short premiered at the 2000 Toronto International Film Festival as part of its "Preludes" series of shorts played before feature films in celebration of TIFF’s 25th Anniversary. It played to great acclaim.

Careful

Guy Maddin
Canada / 1992 / 100 min / Beta SP

Strange passions run amok in the alpine village of Tolzbad, whose residents live in obsessive silence, walking on tenderhooks to avoid the constant threat of avalanches, icy paths and lightning strikes that seem to plague them. The thunderous yearnings of daughter for father, and son for mother will make you squirm in your seat. Shot in the style of an early German sound film, Careful is complete with intertitles, an intentionally crackly soundtrack, and hand-tinted colour effects.

 

Saturday, November 18, 7:30 PM     

Workman Theatre, CAMH

Down Memory Lane: Up Close & Personal

This program brings together Maddin’s first film, The Dead Father with one of his most recent, My Dad Is 100 Years Old. Both are homage to fathers and memory - running themes in virtually all of Maddin’s films. Remembering, like forgetting, turns on the same axis. The program reminds us that we can’t have one without the other. Depicts scenes of sexual content. Viewer discretion is advised.

The Dead Father

Guy Maddin
Canada / 1986 / 26 min / Beta SP

Maddin’s first ever film, tells the story of a young man, whose father has died, but who continues to haunt his son’s existence, persistently appearing in his daydreams and nightmares. This grey comedy takes the dark subject matter and produces humorous results.

My Dad Is 100 Years Old

Guy Maddin
Canada / 2005 / 16 min / DigiBeta

“My Dad Is 100 Years Old was made to celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of my father’s birth in 1906…. When I met Guy Maddin two years ago for the shooting of The Saddest Music In The World, I knew I wanted to borrow his unique images to illustrate the film I wished to do about my father. In Guy’s films there is a ‘cinema nostalgia’: the black-and-white, fading, dilapidated look of his films fills me with sadness - the same sadness I experience trying to hold on to my parents’ memory.”
                                                                                                                              - Isabella Rossellini (TIFF 2005)

Cowards Bend The Knee

Guy Maddin
Canada / 2003 / 64 min / Beta SP

Jam-packed with enough kinetically photographed action to seem like a never-ending cliff-hanger, Cowards Bend The Knee is a Feuillade serial ultra-condensed and blenderised, as ghostwritten by Euripides.  If fiction is sometimes barely disguised autobiography, Cowards is its mirror image, twisted and poisoned wish-fulfillment: the mythomaniacal Maddin casts “himself” (actually, Darcy Fehr) as a hockey sniper made lily-livered by mother and daughter femme fatales, and resurrects his father as the team’s radio broadcaster and his own romantic antagonist. Set in a shadow-suffused hockey arena and a beauty salon-slash-abortion clinic lined with two-way mirrors, the plot drips with the Grecian formula, as sordid family secrets spawn unintentional murder most foul.
Originally presented as an installation in ten peepholes at Toronto’s Power Plant gallery and the 2003 Rotterdam Film Festival (where it won a special mention from the FIPRESCI jury).

 

 

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