The Rendezvous with Madness Film Festival, happening as we speak in Toronto, explores cinematic representations of mental health and addiction. Film and video programs are followed by post-screening panel discussions with people who receive mental health and addiction services, as well as writers, directors, actors, health care professionals and academics.
The sessions—which are free and open to the public—will be moderated by highly-acclaimed journalists Kathryn Gretsinger and Charlie Smith, and the great David Diamond (Headlines Theatre’s trailblazing co-founder and current Artistic Director). They “will get at the nuts and bolts of creating safe, affordable and supportive housing. Each day deals with location, financing and necessary supports and services.”
Moderated panels will be made up of people who have experienced homelessness, Metro Vancouver city councillors and business leaders.
Panelists will each present a short talk on the day’s topic, followed by an open dialogue with the audience.
The ideas discussed at the Sessions will generate an official Community Action Report—designed “to inform policy.” In fact, Headlines Theatre has written agreements from the following organizations to receive the report for their research for national, provincial, regional and local strategies on mental health and homelessness:
The Mental Health Commission of Canada
BC Housing
The City of Vancouver
The Greater Vancouver Regional Steering Committee on Homelessness
RainCity Housing
Coast Mental Health
If you’d like to participate (and you really really should), The Community Dialogue Sessions are being held in Vancouver at the Firehall Arts Centre:
280 E. Cordova Street
Vancouver, British Columbia
November 24, 25 and 26 @ 1:30pm each day Admission is free and open to the public
For more information call 1-604-871-0508 or email info@headlinestheatre.com.
On IrkedMagazine.com, we’ve highlighted the extraordinary work of AXIS Dance Company multiple times over the past few years (hopefully driving a steady trickle of curious readers to their website).
Singer-songwriter Dan Mangan, speaking to Q radio host Jian Ghomeshi about the song Basket:
It’s a bit of an ode to my grandfather. After he passed away, I kind of came up with this idea that your life is a basket, and throughout your life you’re putting greeting cards and letters and notes into this basket. And every story, every experience that you’ve ever shared gets fueled into this basket that becomes you. And you are shaped by everything that’s ever happened to you or around you. He started to lose his memories, he started to mix things up, he started to call me his own brother’s name, and he’d confuse my brother and I. And I thought, y’know, that’s really tragic, and what do you do when the basket starts falling apart, and all those letters and stories fall to the ground? So the song is about getting old and pissed off, but then at the same time it’s about the redemption, it’s about holding on to those memories.
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Listen to Dan Mangan’s overwhelmingly-moving live performance of his song Basket off the new album “Nice, Nice, Very Nice” (Then go buy Dan’s music on iTunes!):
Here’s our favourite shot from Karen Stuebing’s recent photo gallery, titled Home of the White Tail Deer. Karen, your work is utterly magnificent! Keep the incredible photographs coming:
Quoting artist Ben Blais, posting to the Planet Cancer message boards on September 20th:
Hey all, I am an art student at Vanderbilt University and I wanted to do an art project about the lack of focus on young adults with cancer in the medical profession, and about the people who have a lot to share about their interests or their stories. I know it sounds broad, but here’s what I am thinking: to talk to some cool people age 18 to 30 about really anything they want to tell me, and I will interpret their ideas into a drawing. The drawings will be auctioned through planet cancer for fund raising, and I can even make copies for those who gave me their stories. Thank you to everyone for your help! If you would like to check out my work you can see it on facebook here (friend me!).
It’s well and truly September and the world is starting to show its straggly side, as though it’s been turned inside out. Lots of goldenrod, cicadas and leaves falling. The world is going beautifully bald. I’m getting ready for my poetry workshops for women with disabilities, for the book tour, and trying to start another novel… which is about like I imagine breastfeeding to be…at times lovely, at others painful, unending and occassionally mind numbing. Let me know if there is another, better way…
If you are in New York on September 10th (i.e. Thursday from 6-8 pm), please join award-winning photographer Jed Fielding at Andrea Meislin Gallery for the opening of his new exhibition Look at me: Photographs from Mexico City—a fascinating, stunning, in-depth pictorial study of blind schoolchildren in Mexico (running until October 17th, 2009).
According to his blog, Jed will be there signing copies of his book Look at me, published by the University of Chicago Press.
The sessions—which are free and open to the public—will be moderated by highly-acclaimed journalists Kathryn Gretsinger and Charlie Smith, and the great 
