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21st-23rd December, 2007 at Bapu Trust is organising ANUBHUTI as a part of the Jan Manasik Arogya Abhiyan, a two year old mental health and human rights campaign in Maharashtra. The campaign comprises of over 40 development and rights based organisations and individuals from Pune and Mumbai. We are doing this event in order to highlight the dire need for good mental health services in Maharashtra which will not violate people's rights. We also hope that the film festival will educate the public on the importance of taking care of our own well being as well as that of people in our families and neighbourhoods. At various junctures of our lives, we are confronted with this binary, sanity-insanity, normality-abnormality. We hear stories of people in our close circles undergoing psychological pain. We read news about stress, road rage, stress levels of the police, performance pressures, youth committing suicide after school results, etc. Once in a way, we read news articles of abysmal conditions of people within mental institutions. Our peace is disturbed when somewhere a mental asylum abuses its patients, as happened in Erwadi, Tamil Nadu in 2001. 27 people were charred to death resulting in public outrage. We sympathise for a minute and life moves on. Mental health is close to us- how we feel, think, imagine, intuit, dream. This is the most intimate part of ourselves. Can we be certain at all points of time, of not crossing the line between sanity and insanity? Mental health and disability has been surrounded by mystery, stigma and silence. Social stereotypes of immature, violent, hysterical, dependent, regressed and helpless mentally ill patients abound. These are further maintained by actors such as policy makers, media, development activists, and most importantly by all of us, the public. The film festival aims to amass diverse stories and lived realities of mental health in today’s context and make us reflect upon how it is intimate to our own sense of self and well being. When we turn in desperation to services, what do we get- only mental hospitals, against which there has been a history of PILs, from the '80s onwards. What we truly need are holistic mental health programs, which factor in the complex lives and desires with which people live and relate to each other. The 3 day film festival, which brings a mix of Indian and international films, fiction / feature films as well as documentaries, is organised around five themes: Mental health and institutions; Mental health and disability; Mental health and sexuality; Mental health and community; Personal experiences in Mental Health. Classics such as "One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest" [with Jack Nicholson as an awesome rule breaker] are reflective of the Indian institutional realities even today. "The telephone", a student film from FTII, shows that its ever so easy to be put away in a mental hospital. Putul Mahmood will be there to talk about her films, ["Two Sisters", "The Window" and "Shilpi"] and the real life people on whom they are based. Testimonies, short films and other corroboratory documentaries follow, underscoring the fact that we must seriously think about what we want to do with mental hospitals and other such custodial institutions ["Titicut Follies"; "True Sancturaries"]. That community alternatives to hospitals is possible needs to be emphasized. A seemless movement of psychologically disabled person into everyday routine life of a community is well portrayed by "The Window". While eastern practices are exported, repackaged and resold in India at escalated costs, we ignore our own cultural psychological healing spaces, such as traditional healing ["Trick or Treat"]. A psychiatrist turned film maker, Dr Parvez Imam, from New Delhi screens several of his 6 short films, ranging from the problems of women languishing in mental hospitals to experiences of those who have recovered. Another section of films describes the disabling aspects of mental illness. Some of the films in the series on ‘mental health and sexuality’ hope to challenge these restrictive notions of sexuality and give us a glimpse into the wide range of variations and fluidity around sex, sexuality and gender expressions. Discussants include Sabala and Kranti, who are health and sexuality trainers from Mumbai; Ketki Rana and Bindu Madhav Khire who are both working with health and mental health concerns of sexual minorities. The last section includes a Reading Session of personal poems and excerpts of stories by Randhir Khare. This section describes in personal terms, what does it mean to "go mad" and how people experience, cope and overcome. It includes a film by Ingmar Bergman ["Through the Glass Darkly"]. The selection helps us to make attitudinal changes about people living with a mental illness, and see them in a more humane way. We also see through this selection that there is no "us" and "them", and that, hanging together in support, love and warmth is what keeps us all mentally well. We hope that the film festival will show the need for empathy, love and interdependence as a solution to mental health problems; and also, the myriad individual ways in which we all can achieve a sense of well being. We invite one and all to this year end event, bringing you time to reflect upon your self and have some fun, too. Dates: 21st-23rd December. Free passes can be obtained at the venue 1 hour before each show, and also on the 20th, December between 3-6 PM at the NFAI.
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