It's a sensitive, moving doc chronicling the life of Tétrault's brother Philip , a Montreal poet, musician and diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic. A promising athlete as a child, Philip began experiencing mood swings in his early 20s. His extended family, including his daughter, share their conflicted feelings love, guilt, shame, anger with the camera. They want to make sure he's safe, but how much can they take?
A teen with autism unlocks a joyous world of self-expression as she shares her voice for the first time using a letter board.
The Élan School was a for-profit, residential behavior modification program and therapeutic boarding school located deep within the woods of Maine. Delinquent teenagers who failed to comply with other treatment programs were referred to the school as a last resort. Treatment entailed harsh discipline, surveillance, degradation, and downright abuse. Years later, the patients who were institutionalized in this facility still carry the trauma they endured, with mixed opinions on the impact of their experience.
How much can you trust your childhood memories? Director Sam Firth investigates, sweeping her parents into the experiment and on a journey into the past.
Inside the dramatic search for a cure to ME/CFS (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome). 17 million people around the world suffer from what ME/CFS has been known as a mystery illness, delegated to the psychological realm, until now. A scientist in the only neuro immune institute in the world may have come up with the answer. An important human drama, plays out on the quest for the truth.
1975 documentary about 11-year-old serial arsonist Michael 'Mini' Cooper, followed by Cooper and the film's director Franc Roddam in conversation with Alan Yentob in 2013.
Recounted mostly through animation to protect his identity, Amin looks back over his past as a child refugee from Afghanistan as he grapples with a secret he’s kept hidden for 20 years.
The Falcons is an intimate, observational documentary that delves into the world of the Tshakhruk Ethnoband, a remarkable musical ensemble in the Armenian highlands. Comprised of special-needs children that reside at the state orphanage, these young musicians find solace, strength, and self-expression through the transformative power of music.
‘Voices from the Shadows’ shows the brave and sometimes heartrending stories of five ME patients and their carers, along with input from Dr Nigel Speight, Prof Leonard Jason and Prof Malcolm Hooper. These were filmed and edited between 2009 and 2011, by the brother and mother of an ME patient in the UK. It shows the devastating consequences that occur when patients are disbelieved and the illness is misunderstood. Severe and lasting relapse occurs when patients are given inappropriate psychological or behavioural management: management that ignores the severe amplification of symptoms that can be caused by increased physical or mental activity or exposure to stimuli, and by further infections. A belief in behavioural and psychological causes, particularly when ME becomes very severe and chronic, following mismanagement, is still taught to medical students and healthcare professionals in the UK. As a consequence, situations similar to those shown in the film continue to occur.
Enter the imaginative world of acclaimed sculptor Rolanda Polonsky, who had been a resident of Netherne Psychiatric Hospital in Coulsdon, Surrey for 26 years when this film was made. One of the positive aspects of her illness, described in the film as a schizophrenia, is that it "tapped a deep source of mystical vision and human feeling" which finds expression in her work.
On a sailboat in the middle of the Ocean, five teenagers in rehabilitation are travelling with adults of different ages and backgrounds. Off unknown coastlines, the boat’s space becomes a huis-clos in which everyone faces their own difficulties, the challenge of living together and also the manoeuvres of sailing, the Ocean and its turmoil—until the arrival on land.
Louis has gained access to Coalinga Mental Hospital in California, which houses more than 500 of the most disturbed criminals in America, convicted paedophiles. Most have already served lengthy prison sentences, but have been deemed unsafe for release. Instead, they have been sent here for an indefinite time. Spending time with those undergoing treatment, Louis wrestles with whether he can ever allow himself to believe men whose whole history is defined by deception and deceit.
This film tells the story of an adolescent psychotherapy group that met at an outpatient clinic for two hours a week over a period of two years. Art and drama were the major therapeutic tools, along with music, movement, poetry, and filmmaking. The varied expressive modalities are demonstrated in this film, as well as the different roles the therapists played in facilitating the group process. In addition to telling the story of the group, this film also includes detailed case studies of two of the members. It is a rare example of multimodality group therapy unfolding over time.
Days of Madness portray an incredible odyssey of two mentally diverse and unjustly rejected people who are learning to accept it, faced with the blindness of the society and the health system that made them addicts.
A documentary about young people with autism, and how arts and creative therapies help them to lead fuller lives.
To heal the wounds of his family and spirit, Director Ari Gold goes on an epic two year journey to complete a "Psychomagic assignment" given to him by filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky.
Follows veterans and active-duty service members from varied backgrounds who come together to combat their traumas through the written word in a USO-sponsored arts workshop at Walter Reed National Military Hospital.
Based on Elizabeth Swados’ picture book of the same name, this animated short film charts one woman's struggle with depression.
In 2007, Gillian Wearing placed an advert – in newspapers, online, in job centers, and elsewhere. It read: “Would you like to be in a film? You can play yourself or a fictional character. Call Gillian.” Of the hundreds of people who replied, seven – chosen through an extended process of auditions, interviews, and workshops – ended up appearing in Self Made. Of those seven, five in particular use the acting technique known as Method to delve into their memories, impulses, anxieties, fears, fantasies, and inner resources to create a series of individual performance vignettes, their personal ‘end scenes’, that reveal with particular intensity and clarity who they really are deep down – or who, in another version of their lives, they might easily have been.
The daily strains of old age disappear as elderly residents and a robot within an Armenian Soviet-era retirement home lose themselves in staging the timeless world of Shakespeare.