Film Categories: Mental Health

  • What Remains Human

    When the ashes of her long-estranged father show up in the mail, Rebecca enlists the help of her siblings to find a suitable dumpsite for his sooty cremains. This black comedy, shot in the dead of winter in Saskatchewan, is an unusual look at the loss of rites of passages in our secular culture. The film’s quiet metaphor – how parental behavior leaves its smudgy mark on us all despite our most frantic efforts to rid ourselves of the legacy – creates a purposeful and layered theme not typically found in comedic films “What Remains Human is a queer absurdist…

  • Walk For Walk

    Lockhart’s unparalleled understanding of the fantastic and grotesque combined with her completely original aesthetic sensibilities create and inhabit an animated landscape where a seemingly endless parade of kooky little creatures walk themselves straight into trouble, but always find a way out. Enter the surreal, ever-changing world of “Walk for Walk”, a colourful, tripped-out animated landscape filled with catchy songs, eyeball kicks, goofball characters, and a great variety of babies: Warm Baby! Mister Baby! Rich Baby! And more! Created using over 1000 hand-painted paper cutouts, puppets and backgrounds. Selected screenings: Fabulous Festival of Fringe Film, Durham, ON, 2006; Rendezvous with Madness…

  • Happy Birthday Hannah

    An irreverent look at diapers and dolls, ‘Happy Birthday Hannah’ is a delightfully funny animated short about Suzy, a rag doll who celebrates her owner’s birthday by painting her room.

  • Der Fus Tort

    A 21st-century take on the tower of Babel story, this zany animated tale combines modern Yiddish storytelling with the hottest of new media. From angel’s foot cake to angels’ cheese cake, this delicious serving of new Yiddish film comes complete with a high fat, double, double ending. “Whimsical drawings and Yiddish humor animate this charming tale. ‘Der Fus Tort’ is a treat for all ages.” – Susan Alper, Director Montreal Jewish Film Festival Yiddish /w English subtitles

  • Slide

    Through a simple act of child’s play, a young boy confronts both his parents’ overwhelming protection and his own very real fears. “Slide” is an animated short film whose narrative centres around the metaphor of being handicapped. Even loving parents hand us crutches; what we do with them is up to us.

  • Bindi

    “Bindi” is a non-dialogue, narrative short film, which explores a mother’s choice to take her own life, while leaving her young daughter to deal with the aftermath alone.

  • Doggie Bag

    A gay couple exits an upscale restaurant with leftover food, steps away from a homeless woman who usually gets her dinner out of the dumpster. “Doggie Bag” looks at the hierarchy of the food chain and at the assumptions and limits of charity.

  • Love in the White City

    “Made with a camera the size of a deck of cards carried in my pants pocket for one year, the ‘White City’ beckons, repulses and quakes with portent. The original poem was commissioned by CBC Radio in 2002 on the theme, ‘Love in Winnipeg’ – it began at 3 am in mid-February at 30 below, on a drive home through an empty, wind-swept, snowbound city. An audience member in my home town asked me why this film in particular was so dark, so sad. I said I didn’t find it to be so, but I wish I’d said something to…

  • Trains of Winnipeg (the short)

    “An epic audiovisual poem. Trains as kinetic sculpture and kitsch, found sound art, a film-maker’s fetish or a Romantic’s wet dream: O take me to far away places, the rhythm in our plastic hearts, as we are also machines. Tortured cello, the scraping wheel, old cameras, film and rail as parallel tracks through the remnants of the industrial age. ‘Trains of Winnipeg’ uses multiple film gauges and digital formats in a collage of colliding and looping vantage points on this brief, ever-moving, moment in history.” Music by Emily Goodden.

  • F Movie

    “An homage to ‘Sesame Street,’ it was made with a brief loop of Super 8 footage shot across the Strait of Juan de Fuca – just 14 miles from Victoria to the Washington State coast and Bangor (the world’s largest nuclear submarine base and a primary Cold War target). “This hilltop view was many things to us while growing up: a place to peer out at the dark with a date, tongue-tied; a place to see the first flash of a long expected nuclear strike; a place to almost hear the bombs dropping on far-off Pacific villages; and up in…