NYAPRS Note: NYAPRS is proud to co-sponsor this event on 11/20 at the Sanctuary for Independent Media in Troy, NY. Don’t forget! Join community members to watch these transformative films and build dialogue around alternatives in the mental health system. The films are playing on the evening of the PROS academy, so if you’re in town for that event, please join us in the evening across the river. See you there!”Voices from the Emotional Underground”
Thurs., Nov. 20, at the Sanctuary for Independent Media in Troy, NY
“Voices from the Emotional Underground” promises to be hopeful evening of transformative stories and alternative perspectives from people who have experienced the mental health system. The program aims to jumpstart a new sort of conversation about mental health and human potential.
The event includes screenings of several award-winning short films, a potluck dinner, and a panel and public forum with nationally known leaders from the Western Mass Recovery Learning Community and the Icarus Project.
5:30 pm “Crooked Beauty” film
6 pm community potluck
7 pm “Beyond the Medical Model” (excerpts) & “The Virtues of Non Compliance”
8 pm panel & forum.
It takes place at the Sanctuary for Independent Media, 3361 6th Avenue, North Troy, NY. Admission by donation ($10 suggested, $5 students/low income). The event, which is open to all, is co-sponsored by the New York Association for Psychiatric Rehabilitation Services, the Mental Health Empowerment Project, Families Together in New York State, Youth Power! and iEAR Presents.
More details at www.mediasanctuary.org<http://www.mediasanctuary.org/> or call 518/692-8242.
The Films:
The internationally acclaimed poetic documentary “Crooked Beauty” (2011, 30 min.) chronicles artist-activist Jacks McNamara’s transformative journey from psych ward inpatient to pioneering mental health advocate. Poignant testimonials connect the fissures and fault lines of human nature to the unstable topography and mercurial weather patterns of the San Francisco Bay Area. This intimate portrait of her intense personal quest to live with courage and dignity also serves as a powerful critique of standard psychiatric treatments. The film is part of the Mad Dance Trilogy<http://www.maddancementalhealthfilmtrilogy.com/> by Ken Paul Rosenthal, which has collectively won 17 awards and been screened at over 50 film festivals.
Excerpts will be shown from “Beyond the Medical Model” (2013) a collaborative project led by Sera Davidow. The hour-long documentary examines the impacts of our one-model system for what we commonly label ‘mental illness’. “Beyond the Medical Model” demonstrates how this rigid framework, which underlies both our legal and medical systems and our language, poses an obstacle to understanding the variety of human experience and taking in new evidence. Through people sharing diverse worldviews and aspects of their own stories, and practitioners and scholars looking refreshingly beyond the dogma, this film encourages us to take a more complex view.
“The Virtues of Non-Compliance” (2014, 25 min.) by Evan Goodchild and Sera Davidow, contests the idea, still authoritatively expressed by many in the mental health establishment, that people who have been given serious psychiatric labels have limited potential and will have to re-adjust their hopes and dreams to their ‘lifelong condition’. This uplifting and rebellious film talks back to such oppressive notions through the voices of people who have been repeatedly told that they can’t, and yet have gone on to live life on their own terms. “The Virtues of Non-Compliance” was voted “Best Short” out of a large field of contenders at Mad in America’s International Film Festival in October.