Film Categories: Mental Health

  • Jimmy

    Jimmy has sandy hair, velvety brown eyes, and needle marks that freckle the baby smooth skin of this thin arms. Jimmy is twelve years old… and a heroin addict.

  • Evanesce

    What happens when a filmmaker loses his sight? “Evanesce” is a collage of fading Super 8 footage shot during the past decade. Phelan confronts the possibility of never seeing again and tries to make sense of the memories trapped in pictures that are disappearing before his very eyes. Selected screenings: Retour d’images Paris, France, 2003; London Disability Arts Film Festival, London, England, 2003

  • Norman: Turn, Climb, Norman

    Norman is a character who is lost in an ambiguous dreamlike nowhere space where he obsessively turns, climbs and twists. The gritty, hand-processed aesthetic reflects Normans’ intense psychological state. The film is divided into three short sections: Turn, Climb and Norman.

  • Deadpan

    Described as “the jauntiest meat-is-murder movie ever made” and “irrational,” “Deadpan” deals with dinner-table angst from the fifties. Laughter is forbidden. Anxiety reigns. Cow tongue is served. What to do? Awards: Funniest Film, Ann Arbor Film Festival, 2002; Jutra Nominee, Best Animation, 2001

  • Open

    An abstract film of vertical horror, absence and descent (After Marcel Duchamp’s painting, ‘Nude Descending a Staircase’, 1912) composed in-camera by optically manipulating an individual frame of hand-painted film. With electronic music track by David McKenzie. The film frame was painted in a single stroke to imitate the blurring of images produced by the opening and closing of the eyelid; and by film slippage (a common fault, where damaged film runs through the camera or projector gate without stopping). Subtle movements of reflected light on the film surface and parallax camera motion animate the painting; which, in tandem with the…

  • Critical Mass

    Shot on Super 8 and blown-up to 16mm for a dreamlike effect, “Critical Mass” is a strange, poetic vision of childhood. From its first vision sequence to its consequential conclusion, the film follows one boy’s wanderings, both internal and external, as he tries to make sense of his world. Life, death, time and place become interchangeable when he happens upon a dead crow, a barren hilltop, and a small boy who serves as a catalyst for his actions. “A low key tale of guttersnipe mysticism… ‘Critical Mass’ is heavy on mood and symbolism, with Cannizzaro drawing some beautiful compositions. What’s…

  • Mad Shadows

    An unconventional psychological mystery, “Mad Shadows” unfolds into a humanistic tale about faith. When Mike, an orderly at St. Belvedere, starts suffering from hallucinations, he comes to believe that a newly admitted catatonic patient is a devine entity who must be saved.

  • ZERO the inside story

    On a journey to find the origins of the number zero, a woman discovers more than she was expecting. The journey begins as a quest for the cultural roots of zero and how this concept touches human consciousness in unexpected ways. The search leads her to India, said to be the birthplace of the mysterious number, and the ancient city of Varanasi. There she maps her inner world onto the powerful mix of Hindu ritual and spirituality she encounters, finally confronting a traumatic event in her past. More than a film about the number that is not, “ZERO the inside…

  • The Holes Remained

    She stared out the window. The children hadn’t called for weeks. “Out of sight, out of mind…” she thought. Florence Hutton was a local newspaper advice columnist. Now she is dead and her daughters have returned to their childhood home to sort through the belongings.

  • Man Who Loved the Bears, The

    Grady Mutzel works nine-to-five, five days a week, and gets the same bus home every day. But he doesn’t take his work home with him. Instead, Grady develops an affection for bears which becomes his obsession. He organizes candy treats in order to feed the bears at the zoo, because “we all need a treat every once in a while.”