SMHAFF: Three Films at the GFT

At the risk of sounding like somebody who thinks about the consequences of what he says before he says them, I have always had a concern about the representation of mental health issues within art. My beloved theatre is a special offender: 'madness,' even in the hands of the most capable writers and directors, frequently becomes a generic craziness, more important for moving the plot forward than addressing the challenges of mental health disorders.

When Shakespeare uses it like this in King Lear, it's like theatre has permission to throw the lunatic on stage with no worries about how this representation influences the audience's perception of, say, bi-polar.

This means I like the Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival (SMHAFF). I find their brochure impossible to navigate, and the mixture of professional performance and community workshops is bundled together. It's so big, so comprehensive, but somewhere there is some important theatre that does understand why theatre can't keep on caricaturing the 'crazy.'

I know that Barrowland Ballet are presenting Tiger as part of the festival, but it is probably better to redirect readers to the website. Until I get a better handle on the events, I'll just slap up a few selected highlights as I receive press releases.

The mighty GFT is hosting a few films: ' three cutting-edge documentaries on the theme of reality.' The subject matter took me by surprise: Alzheimer’s disease (First Cousin Once Removed),  and I Am Breathing which looks at 'the final few months of the life of Motor Neurone disease sufferer Neil Platt.'

The surprise is that I don't especially associate these illnesses with mental health. Yes, I am ignorant: I am glad the festival is making the obvious connection. It pulls away from the usual idea that mental health is all about that difficult illnesses that have psychiatric textbook symptoms (and hog the headlines whenever mental health is discussed).

This is why I like the SMHAFF - it challenges my lazy expectations. Plus there's a film about Mariel Hemmingway, and I have had a crush on her since I first saw Manhattan at the age of twelve.






Press Release Begins:

Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival:
Sunday 6 – Sunday 20 October
The Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival returns to GFT for 2013 with three cutting-edge documentaries on the theme of reality.
Alan Berliner makes a deeply personal statement with his latest film First Cousin Once Removed (Sunday 6 October, 17.30), a portrait of his friend and mentor, the poet Edwin Honig who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease. Berliner, an experimental documentary filmmaker whose films have received awards at many major international film festivals, will host a master class at GMAC at 13.30 on Sunday 6 October and then take part in a Q&A after the screening at GFT.
The final few months of the life of Motor Neurone disease sufferer Neil Platt are recorded in powerful documentary I Am Breathing (Monday 14 October, 18.00), which will be followed by a discussion that asks: who cares for the carers?

Double Oscar-winner Barbara Kopple brings us Running from Crazy (Sunday 20 October, 19.45), an insightful documentary about Mariel Hemingway, the actress and grand-daughter of writer Ernest Hemingway, and her struggles to understand her family’s history with mental health issues. 

We hope to be joined by Barbara Kopple for a Q&A following the screening.

Mental Health in Theatre

Until I get a better idea, I still believe that the importance of theatre is in its potential for providing a public discussions about serious issues -  I end up writing four reviews of Wonderland because, regardless of the end product, it took on a Big Issue and tried to present different approaches to it. There is something about the nature of performance as a communal experience, too. But that is even more ill-defined.

One area that theatre has consistently flubbed, however, is mental illness. Plays do exist that are sympathetic, or accurate, in their treatment of mental illness - especially in the last few years, there has been an effort to reach out to sufferers to allow  their experience to be reflected. Unfortunately, a fairly rich tradition exists - thanks Shakespeare for the "mad people" in King Lear - that is either viciously unkind or plays it for laughs. Even now, it's more common to find that mental illness is the motivation for a character's bad actions than it simply being a fact of their life. 

This is probably a reflection of  a social attitude seen in the law, where mental illness can be a defence akin to diminished responsibility. And so, I am enthusiastic about  the Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival, now occupying much of Scotland (October 1 -24).

Much of the festival features community orientated shows - which fall outside of my critical remit, until I develop a satisfactory way to  discuss them. It does have plenty of professional theatre and film: Vanessa Coffey's Piece of Mind uses dance to interpret the voices of bipolar, the Johnny Cash biopic gets a screening, alongside Lars Von Trier's Melancholia. In the Old Hairdressers, My Sister by Scandal Theatre gets physical and Liz Lochhead is joining a plethora of speakers  for a day of workshops, readings and exhibitions.

Frankly, the whole festival is too big for me to preview: it's tough to pick highlights. But every year, it presents a forum for the discussion of one thing that society has rarely understood. The recent death of Szasz, which led to obituaries that recalled his pioneering attempt to get a philosophical handle on mental health - and the controversy he caused -  reminded me that society hasn't even got a reasonable definition of it.