Film Categories: Mental Health

  • Michael, A Gay Son

    An improvised dramatization of a family counselling session with Michael, a homosexual, and his family. The session is facilitated by an actual social worker, who specializes in such counselling. Each family member is given the opportunity to explore his or her feelings about Michael being homosexual. The film concludes with Michael’s evaluation of his decision to reveal his homosexuality to his family.

  • Mont Real

    “Mont Real” is a satirical view of our western civilization combining aspects of traditional and everyday life in North America. The film deals with our overpowering fantasies and with our enslavement as dependent consumers in a materialistic society. The extremely rapid development of the various visual aspects of the film corresponds with today’s hasty and short-lived deluge of information and stimulation. The film is also meant to counteract the widespread fear of foreign languages and cultures, a fear which seems to be quite common in Canada as well as in many other parts of the world.

  • Museum

    We all make our own ghosts – we take the people and experiences and events that have affected us the most, and encourage them to haunt us. “Museum” is, on every level, replete with ghosts and hauntings. Penny, the narrator and filmmaker, is obsessed with the impossible task of capturing the ghosts that reside within her life on film (the most literal and unforgiving of mediums). Yet even as she struggles with this mission (one common to many image-takers), her own substance and “realness”are brought into question, as her disembodied voice carries us through the narrative. (CW)

  • Necrology

    “In ‘Necrology’, one continuous shot films the faces of a 5 p.m. crowd descending via Pan Am building elevators. In old-fashioned black and white, these faces stare into empty space…like faces from the grave… The film is one of the strongest and grimmest comments upon the contemporary society that cinema has produced.” – Jonas Mekas, Village Voice

  • New Improved Institutional Quality…

    An attempt is made to escape from the oppressive environment of a test – a test containing meaningless, contradictory, and impossible-to-follow directions – by entering into the imagination. In this case it is specifically the imagination of the filmmaker, in which the test-taker encounters images from previous Land films.

  • Niagara

    Drawing on both the substance and spirit of hardcore music, “Niagara” sets in motion a number of male-female scenarios designed to challenge male aggression. A couple’s argument in the back seat of a car erupts into violence when the man suspects his lover of having an affair in Niagara Falls. Another couple arrives home from a dinner party and encounter an intruder in their home. As a gang runs around and commits random acts of violence, they sing the film’s chorus: Do you think he did it?/Wouldn’t be right. Would it?/he’s not the type anyway. Is he?/Hit!Hit!Hit!/He’s all rage and…

  • Nice Step to Take, A

    The radical change from an institutional residence to an apartment complex promoting independence sets the stage for this film about the people at Bellwoods Park House in Toronto. Founded in 1967 by the Adult Cerebral Palsy Institute, Bellwoods is one of the first residences for the disabled in North America. This film puts a face on people too often masked by our perception of disability. Produced for The Adult Cerebral Palsy Institute of Metro Toronto.

  • Now, Yours

    “Once he has focused our concentration on the screen ahead, Hoolboom’s disembodied voice questions who has access to the privilege of a filmic voice and, once granted, the extent to which this authority is unquestioned by both the filmmaker and the viewing audience. ‘Now, Yours’ investigates this power of control through footage from 1950’s tourism and customer appreciation films/advertisements.” – Pleasure Dome, Toronto

  • On Her Baldness

    “On Her Baldness” is a documentary about women who have lost their hair due to illness or who have shaved their heads by choice. Focusing on women whose baldness has forced them to confront issues of appearance, self-image and sexuality, this film challenges viewers to question and confront their own prejudices regarding the true nature of beauty and femininity.

  • Ay Que Pelos!

    “Ay Que Pelos!” is a hand-processed experimental film about anxiety disorders and panic attack syndrome. This bilingual film (interweaving English and Spanish) incorporates personal experiences, family history, case studies and medical texts, and uses these to examine the perception and (mis)understanding of the disease. The film is visually structured to reflect and invoke the experience of panic attack.