Film is a storytelling format that can splice directly into a person’s awareness of something. Yet in hindsight, when has the medium showcased the sensitive and nuanced topics of mental health and/or addiction?

Hindsight is a short film retrospective that traverses the topic of mental health and addiction within the National Film Board’s extensive archive. This co-presented program looks back almost seventy years to dynamically highlight a spectrum of stories and filmmaking techniques. Films sampled from the archive include Breakdown (1951), a fictitious film about a seemingly well-adjusted young woman who’s schizophrenic episode has landed her in a modern mental hospital. The Agony of Jimmy Quinlan (1978), a portrait documentary depicting the life of Jimmy Quinlan, one of an estimated 5000men who struggled with addiction in the alleys of late 1970s Montreal. Street Kids (1985), a succession of montaged black and white photographs voiced over to reveal a glance into juvenile prostitution. Nowhere Land (2015), a documentary narrated by Inuit Bonnie Ammaaq and her family tells their faint memories of attempting to live while the government-manufactured community of Igloolik becomes an elegy for Indigenous displacement and mental health. XO RAD MAGIQUE (2019) is an animated video work both psychedelic and hypnotic in nature, that takes you on an abstract journey living with schizophrenia in daily life.

Accompanying this NFB retrospective is a pre-recorded video interview with local Toronto artists Katelyn Gallucci, Greg Mccarthy and Derek Coulombe. In conversation, the artists will discuss the activity of looking back. How do the films bring up feelings of hindsight? How do we navigate these feelings? Why do we as artists sample from archives? Why is it important to create discussions around archival material?

In preparation for visits from foreign dignitaries, the authorities in Tehran clear the streets of homeless people, sex workers and drug users. Those who get picked up are taken to special detention centers outside the city. Stripped of their rights, dignity and freedom, the authorities hold them there until the outside world’s eyes are directed elsewhere. Then the men are released to go back out onto the streets. But the women are not: instead, they become official state prisoners for life. First time feature film Director Behzad Nalbandi found ways around the official channels and gained access to one of the women’s prisons, where he used a sound recorder to document the harrowing stories of its inmates. Utilizing original stop-motion animation to illustrate the accounts of violence, humiliation, poverty and addiction, as well as the Director’s own impressions of the bleak detention center. Such inventive animation allows Nalbandi to offer these “invisible” women a platform without exposing their identity. What this powerful five-years-in-the-making documentary does reveal is the grim reality concerning the position of women in Iranian society—and these women in particular.

برای بازدید های مقامات عالی رتبه خارجی، مسئولان شهرداری تهران خیابان های شهر را از بی خانمان، کارگران جنسی و معتادان پاکسازی و بازداشت شدگان را به مکانی خارج از شهر انتقال می دهند. محروم از حقوق، عزت و آزادی خود مسئولین آنها را در این اماکن نگه می دارند تا زمانی که دنیای بیرون توجهش معطوف چیز دیگری شود. سپس، مردان آزاد می شوند اما زنان می مانند و تبدیل به زندانیان حکومت برای طول عمرشان می شوند. بهزاد نعلبندی با اولین فیلم بلند خود، به یکی از این زندان های زنان دسترسی پیدا کرده و با استفاده از دستگاه ضبط صدا داستان های دلخراش زندانیان را مستند کرده است. با به کارگیری خلاقانه از تکنیک استاپ موشن، این مستند–انیمیشن وضعیت خشونت، تحقیر، فقر و اعتیاد را در این اماکن به تصویر می کشد. فیلم‌ساز با انتخاب نوآورانه متریال و تکنیک متناسب با موضوع فیلم، فضایی را برای حضور این زنان “نامرئی“، بدون فاش شدن هویت شان فراهم می کند. این فیلم مستند تاثیر گذار که تولید آن ۵ سال طول کشیده است موقعیت ظالمانه و تلخ زنان را در جامعه ایران و بخصوص این زنان زندانی را نمایان می کند.

Following the screening of The Unseen, join us for a virtual panel with graphic artist and documentary filmmaker Behzad Nalbandi to discuss the addiction crisis in Tehran and the harsh realities of the city’s homeless population. Moderated by representatives from the Intercultural Iranian Canadian Resource Centre.

بعد از اتمام اکران فیلم، با ما و هنرمند گرافیست و فیلمساز بهزاد نعلبندی همراه شوید تا بیشتر درباره ی بحران اعتیاد در تهران و واقعیت های سخت جمعیت بی خانمان های شهر بحث و گفتگو کنیم.  این جلسه مجازی توسط نمایندگانی از مرکز فرهنگ ایرانی– کانادایی (Intercultural Iranian Canadian Resource Centre) مدیریت می شود. 

Winter’s Yearning is an eye-opening portrait documentary of the small fishing town of Maniitsoq, Greenland, which has been selected as the next plant location for US aluminium giant ALCOA. An aluminium plant could provide a useful step towards Greenlandic independence. However, visions of the anticipated windfall fade into a waiting game. Directors Sidse Torstholm Larsen and Sturla Pilskog intertwine the lives of three Maniitsoq residents: a social worker, a young woman and the town’s ‘aluminium coordinator’. Through attentively layering their stories, situations and personal efforts towards self-sufficiency, the atmosphere of a small-town yearning for progression and change is beautifully portrayed.

Screening with

Carlotta’s Face
Valentin Riedl and Frédéric Schuld | 2018 | Germany | German with English subtitles | 5 minutes

Carlotta’s Face illuminates a relationship dysfunction in its sensitive portrayal of a woman who suffers from prosopagnosia, the inability to recognize faces, and her salvation through art.

Group therapy sessions. Community meals. Heartfelt conversations. This life is foreign to Margot (Julie Moulier), a thirty something woman from a wealthy French family. Margot lives with addiction and she’s just enrolled in a rehab facility in a remote French countryside. It’s quaint and dreamlike in the country which is the complete opposite of Margot’s fevered mental state. Her repressed feelings make Margot reluctant to open up to strangers. She doesn’t believe in the community approach to recovery. What might happen if she actually let go of her fears and allowed others in?  Margot’s character offers audiences an intimate examination of the deep-rooted psychological causes of addiction. Our Wonderful Lives gives us a nuanced and refreshing look into community based recovery and the significance of something as simple as friendship.

(En Français)

GENRE: FICTION

SUJET: TOXICOMANIE, COMMUNAUTÉ, AMITIÉ, THÉRAPIE DE GROUPE, RÉADAPTATION

TYPE: FILM

Séances de thérapie de groupe. Repas communautaires. Conversations sincères. Cette vie est étrangère à Margot (Julie Moulier), une femme d’une trentaine d’années issue d’une famille bourgeoise française. Margot est toxicomane et elle vient de s’inscrire dans un centre de réadaptation situé dans une campagne française isolée. La vie y est douce et onirique, tout à l’inverse de la fièvre mentale de Margot. Ses sentiments refoulés empêchent Margot de s’ouvrir aux autres patients. Elle ne croit pas à la réadaptation à base communautaire. Que pourrait-il arriver si elle abandonnait ses peurs et s’ouvrait à autrui? Le personnage de Margot offre au public un examen intime des causes psychologiques profondes de la dépendance. Nos Vies formidables nous donne un regard nuancé et rafraîchissant sur la réadaptation à base communautaire et la signification de quelque chose d’aussi simple que l’amitié.