Before mental health became a movement, symptoms of mental instability were thought to be brought on by a person’s provocative mind; awareness and treatment centred around tracing the cause of mental illness. Those who openly suffered were deemed outcasts within western society and forced to live in a world that either ignored or stigmatized different mental capacities. Acceptance among peers was difficult to find. In 1951, Mental Health Week was introduced across Canada. Slowly, society’s collective consciousness began to shift into something we would recognize today. The goal of psychological wellness is not perfection but a radical acceptance of the varying components of health. One person’s social environment is different from others. We must lead with sympathy. More than ever before, Canadians are willing to listen, advocate and cultivate inclusive solutions for those who need supports.

 

HINDSIGHT is a short film retrospective that traverses the topic of mental health and addiction within the National Film Board’s extensive archive. This  program looks back almost seventy years to reveal a dynamic range of lived experiences from schizophrenia to alcoholism, to sexual trauma and Indigenous displacement. In calling upon the visceral spectrum of filmmaking techniques, this reflective retrospective demonstrates how storytelling can be used to shift, change and empower an individual’s uniquely real vantage point.

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Breakdown (Robert Anderson, 1951) is a black and white consciousness raising film made by Mental Health authorities of the provinces of Canada. Set within suburbia and a modern mental hospital, a friendly neighbour tells the story of Anne, a twenty-three-year-old woman struggling with schizophrenia. A town member astutely questions why we seem to be afraid to think about mental illness in a motivating call for action. 

 

The Agony of Jimmy Quinlan (Janice Brown, Robert Duncan, Andy Thomson, 1978) features the speckled alleys of Montreal as an omniscient narrator reveals the story of 38year-old Jim,  who has struggled with alcoholism. Stuck between a rock and a hard place, the lives of his peers and the local mission become elaborate pillars of Jim’s recovery.
 
Street Kids (Peg Campbell, 1985) is a personal documentary featuring first-person stories of sexual abuse and trauma narrated over a montage of black and white photographs of street scenes and fragmented daily living. In conversation, young people divulge why they would choose the labour of sex work.

Nowhere Land (Rosie Bonnie Ammaaq, 2015) presents the  backdrop of the colonial government-manufactured community of Igloolik as Bonnie Ammaaq and her family vividly remember the time they lived off of the land like other generations. This patient documentary holds space for the trauma of Indigenous displacement.
 
XO RAD MAGICAL (Christopher Gilbert Grant, 2019) features drawn lines colliding to become a visual poem expressing our beautiful brains’ capacities to communicate sensational experiences, which are beyond words.
 
Accompanying this NFB retrospective is a pre-recorded video interview with local Toronto artists Katelyn Gallucci, Greg Mccarthy and Derek Coulombe. In conversation, the artists will discuss the activity of looking back, the power of the shifting narrative voice from omniscient to the first-person. In hindsight, how do the films succeed and fail to bring the conversation on mental-health forward? It’s important to create discussion around archival material. The truth is, the line between a healthy and unhealthy mental state is delicate. Repeatedly sharing stories is a gestural appeal towards integration.