FESTIVAL PROGRAM TEAM BIOGRAPHIES:
Features Programming Committee:
LISA BROWN is the Founder and Executive/Artistic Director of Workman Arts. Over the past 24 years, she has nurtured WA’s growth and development in becoming an award winning and pioneering mental health and arts company. Lisa is the co-founder and director of the annual Rendezvous with Madness Film Festival, and is very excited about this 19th edition
MILES COHEN trained with the Vancouver Playhouse Theatre and Canadian Mime School, with a B.A. in Drama from Bishop’s University. Miles has 30 years experience in theatre and has worked for such varied companies as The Second City, Mime Company Unlimited and The Grand Theatre. As a dedicated and involved Member of Workman Arts, Miles has taken Film Education, Creative Writing and numerous Drama Workshops. He knows first-hand the importance of Workman Arts in healing journeys past, present and future
MAUREEN JUDGE is a Toronto filmmaker whose newest Gemini- nominated documentary, Mom’s Home, forms the final film in her vérité trilogy on parent/(adult) child relationships, which also includes: the Genie-winner Unveiled; The Mother Daughter Relationship; and In My Parents’ Basement. Maureen was nominated for a 2009 Gemini Award as producer of FLicKeR, winner of the Special Jury Prize for Canadian Feature Documentary, Hot Docs Film Festival.
PAT KEARN has worked as a registered nurse at CAMH for over 25 ears. She has enjoyed watching the evolution of Workman Arts Programs and volunteered with Madness and Arts in 2003. Pat has attended other film festivals in her travels, but RWM is by far her favorite.
Shorts Programming Committee:
JESSAMY CASTILLO is a Toronto based writer and visual artist. He studied Film at York University, specializing in screenwriting and since worked as a freelance story editor, photographer, and copywriter. Currently finishing his first major work in fiction, he looks forward to getting back to his brushes and bottles of acrylic.
MARS HORODYSKI is Toronto filmmaker who specializes in comedy, family drama and documentary. She is an alumnus of the Canadian Film Centre's Director's Lab and the Berlinale Talent Campus. Following her residency at the CFC, she went on to the Universal Short Dramatic Film Program and her award winning films have screened at festivals worldwide. Along with a few new shorts, she is currently finishing up a feature length documentary and developing her first dramatic feature project.
MARY MATIJCZYK is a social worker with over ten years of mental health experience working with children, youth and their families in both Canada and the UK. She holds a BA in Social Work from Robert Gordon University in the UK and a Social Service Worker Diploma from Mohawk College in Ontario.
RAJ PANIKKAR is an award-winning Toronto based producer. With Fifth Ground Entertainment, he associate produced the half-hour comedy series "Rent-A-Goalie" for Showcase, and co-produced "The Rawside Of...", a music documentary series for IFC. Raj has written several films, including the OMDC Calling Card project "Safe". He also wrote and directed "Day of the Carp" which won the Best Screenplay award at the New York I.I.F.V Festival in 2000. Raj has won several other awards such as the Nick Holeris Memorial Scholarship Award for excellence in screenwriting. Among many new projects he is developing at Fifth Ground are the half-hour comedy "Slacker Moms" in development with CBC, the half hour comedy "Standby", and the one hour drama "Saint Bats" in development with Showcase.
INDUSTRY EVENTS
AN ILLUSTRATED TALK WITH JENN E. NORTON
Sunday November 6
7:00 pm
Workman Arts
651 Dufferin St
Free Event, Open to Public
The imaginative work of Jenn E Norton is not quite a surrealist dreamscape, but an actively dreamed scape, a place built with architecture of wonder and rumination. Ordinary objects and activities become strange through the bending of their longstanding expectations, often achieved through disjunctive content realistically glued together with composite editing. This uncanniness constructed through digital intervention invites new approaches and consideration to the familiar. Her cast may be her cats, inanimate objects or multiple versions of herself in situations that derive from her immediate experience, yet the formal considerations allude to greater ontological questions.
Jenn will discuss how working intimately with the technology used in the production of her practice in a DIY capacity marries intuitive and formal approaches to her creative process. Working in near isolation, honing her technical skill as an editor, animator, compositor and sound designer via online tutorials and trial and error, Jenn creates moving images outside of a rubric of traditional cinematic roles of director and producer. Norton will also discuss the melancholy present beneath the visual glitter. Curator and artist Ufuk Gueray recalled a quote by Francis Bacon in an essay to describe Norton's work, "Even within the most beautiful landscape, in the trees, under the leaves the insects are eating each other; violence is a part of life." There is no overt violence in Norton's practice, but darkness lurks beneath the glittery surface [...].
PORTRAYALS OF SUICIDE: SHIFTING THE LENS
Tuesday November 8
7:00 pm
NFB Mediatheque
150 John Street
Unrated
Open only to film and media professionals
Featuring clips from: The Next Day, Jason Gilmore, Canada, 2011; The High Level Bridge, Trevor Anderson, Canada, 2011; Burning Blossom Kathryn Threlkeld, Canada, 2010.
Suicide is a leading cause of death in men ages 25 to 29 and 40 to 44, women ages 30 to 34, and the second cause of death among adolescents. The statistics are astounding and yet relatively unknown to the average Canadian as suicide is not something that is regularly covered in the media. Why? Because evidence suggests that extensive media reporting on suicide can trigger other suicides. However, evidence also suggests that in order to reduce and prevent suicide, the public needs to be made aware and the issues discussed. All of this therefore begs the question, how do we talk about suicide? Dr. Isaac Sakinofvsky, a psychiatrist and suicidologist, leads us in a dialogue with filmmakers, digital media creators and journalists as we discuss the role and responsibility of those who document and report on suicide....
CAMH: GRAND ROUNDS PRESENTATION INTERVENTION CANADA
Thursday November 1012:00pm
The Centre For Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH)
33 Russel Street
Rendezvous with Madness presents a Grand Rounds presentation featuring clips from the reality television program Intervention Canada and conversation with Series Producer Karen Wookey and CAMH Physician-in-Chief Dr. Benoit Mulsant.
Intervention Canada profiles “people whose addictions have brought them to a point of crisis or estranged them from their friends and loved ones.” Based on A&E’s long running Emmy Award-winning Intervention series, an intervention led by trained mental health practitioners and the subject’s friends and family is staged at the end of each episode.
In the last decade, television depictions of mental illness have changed. Increasingly, reality television is providing a forum for discussion and even creating opportunities for treatment. In an exclusive presentation to CAMH, Karen Wookey and Dr. Benoit Mulsant explore the Intervention Canada team’s approach to developing one of the most controversial series in mental health.
With supporting material Wookey and Mulsant will also discuss the clinical value of therapeutic intervention and its place in documentary production, and reality television.
Rendezvous with Madness would like to invite all Grand Rounds visitors who would like to participate in a broader discussion about Intervention Canada to join us at the TIFF Bell Lightbox Thursday night.
