GENRE: Documentary (feature)
TYPE: FILM | IN-PERSON
KEYWORDS: Homelessness, Addiction, Graffiti, Punk

Hanna Finn’s talent and charisma were undeniable from an early age. By the time she reached preschool, her creativity and sharp sense of humour were on full display. Now a young adult known as Psykos, she exists on the fringes, describing her life as one in a “parallel society.”  Ribe’s documentary Ink, Blood and Socks chronicles Psykos’ struggles with addiction and her journey toward recovery. Keywords:  Homelessness, Addiction, Graffiti, Punk

WITH SHORT FILM ——— Off Suit —— Lou Estores & Brian Demoskoff | 2018 | Canada | Documentary | 3 minutes | English | Directors in attendance

GENRE: Fiction (feature)
TYPE: FILM | IN-PERSON
KEYWORDS: Poverty, Housing, Intergenerational Trauma, Family, Fiction

Writer-director Pedro Freire’s feature debut Malu offers a raw and emotional exploration of motherhood and the circumstances perpetuating transgenerational trauma. Amid the many sequences of emotional chaos, Malu emerges as a touching story about healing, forgiveness, and learning to see the people we love for who they truly are rather than who we expect them to be.

WITH SHORT FILM ——— Mechanism ——  Eva Grant | Canada | Experimental | 2023 | 5 minutes | English

GENRE: Experimental Documentary (feature)
TYPE: FILM | IN-PERSON
KEYWORDS: Schizophrenia, Housing, Experimental Documentary

Pushing at the limits of non-fiction cinema, A Man Imagined is a bracingly intimate and hallucinatory portrait of a man with schizophrenia surviving amidst urban detritus and decay. Made in close collaboration with 67-year-old Lloyd, this immersive documentary fable follows the jagged path of a decades-long street survivor, across harsh winters and blistering summers, as he sells discarded items to motorists, sleeps in junkyards and lapses into near-psychedelic reveries.

When Lloyd reveals a startling detail from his past, the filmmakers try to help him piece together a story that spills out in fragments—a jigsaw puzzle of painful childhood abstraction that seems to hold an unspeakable mystery at its core.

With its subjective, lyrical camerawork and expressionistic sound design, the latest feature from directors Brian M. Cassidy and Melanie Shatzky finds poetic power and transcendence in the harrowed mind of its protagonist, delivering a poignant meditation on life at the margins.

WITH SHORT FILM ——-Uncle Bardo —— Luke Mistrucci | 2024 | Canada | Documentary | 14 minutes | English

GENRE: Documentary (feature)
TYPE: FILM | IN-PERSON
KEYWORDS: Postpartum depression, Women’s issues, Stress, Family

Unemployment, poverty, disease and domestic violence are commonplace in the township of Alexandra in Johannesburg. For young mothers, who often have to raise their children alone, they barely have time for themselves and their babies. A group of women from the Ububele Home Visiting program are working to transform the neighborhood by improving the mental well-being of mothers and their babies.

WITH SHORT FILM ——— Beyond Recall —— Ajay Kumar | 2024 | Canada | Fiction | 11 minutes | English | Director in attendance

GENRE: Documentary (feature)
TYPE: FILM | IN-PERSON
KEYWORDS: Indigenous documentary, Family, Trauma, Addiction

A National Film Board of Canada Production

Dr. Jules Arita Koostachin’s deeply personal documentary WaaPaKe (Tomorrow) asks the difficult question: “Who are we without our pain?”

For generations, the suffering of residential school Survivors has radiated outward, impacting Indigenous families and communities. Children, parents and grandparents have contended with the unspoken trauma, manifested in the lingering effects of colonialism: addiction, emotional abuse and broken relationships.

In her efforts to help the children of Survivors, including herself and her family, Koostachin makes the difficult decision to step in front of the camera and participate in the circle of truth. She is joined in this courageous act of solidarity by members of her immediate family, as well as an array of voices from Indigenous communities across Turtle Island. Moving beyond burying intergenerational trauma, WaaPaKe (Tomorrow) is an invitation to unravel the tangled threads of silence and unite in collective freedom and power.

Film still from 3 Seconds In 6 Seconds Out by Christopher Beaulieu.

The short film program ‘I don’t need to ask you to love me because I love myself’’ explores many different modes of filmmaking as a means to express emotions related to how we not only exist but thrive in a world filled with challenges, contradictions and conundrums. Featuring artists: Jamila Balde, Christopher Beaulieu, Jeyolyn Christie, Jet Coughlan, Brian Demoskoff, Gabe Gonçalves, Helen Posno, Zan Redcrow, Emily Schooley, Ardene Shapiro, Andrea Thompson and TK Workman.

Followed by Spoken Word & Open Mic | 4:00 PM – 5:30 PM

FEATURED FILMS

GENRE: Fiction (feature)
TYPE: FILM | IN-PERSON
KEYWORDS: 2SLGBTQIA+ issues, Coming out, Trauma

In the winter of 1970, a small-town plumber from rural New Brunswick must drive his beat-up work truck 1000 miles to Toronto to get his estranged, gay brother out of jail after being arrested for having sex in a public park. The two men are then forced to drive back home together at the behest of their hard-nosed mother before they kill each other. Inspired by a true story.

GENRE: Documentary (feature)
TYPE: FILM | IN-PERSON
KEYWORDS: Family, Suicide, Trauma, Youth

Update from Workman Arts regarding October 10 World Mental Health Day

GENRE: Documentary (feature)
TYPE: FILM | IN-PERSON

Purportedly the first documentary feature film made in Gaza, Gaza Ghetto: Portrait of a Palestinian Family highlights the historical precedents of war, dispossession and military control that influence a family’s daily life in the Jabalia refugee camp. Intimate scenes – a child is born, a grandmother dies – are inter-cut with visits to the architects of the Israeli military occupation. 

Gaza Ghetto follows the El-Adel family: Itidhal and Mustafa and their many children, including Ra’ida Abdullah, Samar, Shuroug, Riham and Ayed. We see the family’s humdrum daily routines: waking up grumpy, getting dressed for school, brushing their hair, and attending morning prayer at the UNRWA Jabalia Girls’ Preparatory School. The film provides historical context through archival footage from 1948 when the original Israeli invasion of Palestine displaced some 150,000 people, and 1967, when the Six-Day War resulted in the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank and the displacement of a further 300,000 people. We see scenes of the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City, where Mustafa works as a healthcare provider alongside an inadequate international response—the United Nations and Quaker volunteers distributing meager rations—and the grueling daily grind endured by the working-age men and women of the camp, who leave the camp before dawn each day and spend several hours commuting to Tel Aviv or Jaffa to then spend hours, and sometimes entire fruitless days, soliciting jobs in an informal day-labor market.

Discussion to follow with mental health / health care workers/supporters on the theme of workplace mental health to connect to the 2024 World Mental Health Day theme. Participants include Mohamed Abdelhack, Sarah Abusarar, Rayan Anton and Dr. Yipeng Ge.

Mohamed Abdelhack is a Postdoctoral Fellow at CAMH studying neural dynamics of psychiatric disorders using machine learning. He is also the founder of Arabs in Neuroscience, a grassroots organization that aims to improve education in Arab countries and create a network for Arabic-speaking neuroscientists. He is a recipient of Canada Brain Starts Award and The Neuro – Irv & Helga Cooper Foundation Open Science Prize. He originates from Alexandria, Egypt and has international experience working in Japan, the United States, and South Africa.

Rayan Anton MSW, RSW is a Palestinian Social Worker and Psychotherapist. He is a first-generation immigrant from occupied Palestine, and moved here at a young age with his family in hopes of finding a life free of danger and oppression. He works largely with the Arab community and also the 2SLGBTQ community here in Toronto. He is the co-founder of Meem Toronto – a social group for queer and trans people from the Arabic-speaking region.

Dr. Yipeng Ge is a primary care physician and public health practitioner based on the traditional, unceded and unsurrendered territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg. In his clinical practice, he works in family medicine practice and refugee health at a community health centre. He has worked on and studied the structural and colonial determinants of health in both the settler colonial contexts of so-called Canada and occupied Palestine. Having witnessed the atrocities in Gaza firsthand as a humanitarian medical volunteer, Dr. Ge leverages his direct experiences to raise awareness and educate the Canadian public about global injustices.