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February 02, 2005

Psychoanalysts to Discuss Four Films

The 23rd annual film/discussion series sponsored by the Baltimore-Washington Institute for Psychoanalysis will be held at the Baltimore Museum of Art in April, 2005. The films will explore the experience of separation and loss. Films are selected which are psychologically perceptive and lend themselves to illuminating psychoanalytic concepts. The discussions are directed at interested community people as well as mental health professionals.

The opening film (April 1) will be In America, discussed by Allan Gold, M.D. The director, James Sheridan, has created an autobiographic story of an Irish family who come to America as illegal aliens after the death of a young son from brain cancer. They settle in the lower depths of Hell’s Kitchen, and use the struggle to survive to avoid mourning. However the denial ultimately breaks down as the film progresses.

Together (April 8) is a Chinese film directed by Kaige Chen who did Farewell My Concubine. Leon Levin, M.D. is the discussant. A 13 year old violin prodigy is taken by his peasant father to Beijing to compete in music at a world class level. He is both a virtuoso and an early adolescent with ordinary confusion and emotional conflicts of boys his age. Issues of separation and rebellion are depicted. The actor who plays the prodigy is in fact a violin prodigy and he creates a superb sound tract.

Finding Nemo (April 15) is the first animated film discussed in this series. This is a visually compelling and witty under-the-sea story of an anxious and overprotective father searching for his lost boy. He travels “under the surface” as he confronts his fears, feelings, and symptoms in a journey that parallels the therapeutic process. Noreen Honeycutt, PhD, is the discussant.

The last film, Lost in Translation, will be discussed on April 22 by Paul Roberts, M.D. Directed by Sofia Coppola, the film is the tale of an over-the hill actor (played by Bill Murray) and a young married Yale graduate (played by Scarlett Johannson) who meet in a Tokyo hotel. Both are searching for the meaning of their lives, looking at the situation from different points of view. They are both excited and disoriented by being in a foreign culture.

For further information call the Baltimore-Washington Institute at 401-792-8060 or 301-470-3635.

Posted by admin at February 2, 2005 11:25 AM