While waiting for the forth and last short film created with the visual research materials collected as part of the Together for Mental Health project, we are pleased to release the trailers of three of the short films. They are currently going to festivals but, once done touring (including premiering in Korea in the next two months) they will be freely available on the Movie-ment Youtube channel you can also subscribe.

Anyone who wishes to use the short films for educational and advocacy/activism purposes before they are available can contact the film Director and Principal Investigator Prof. Erminia Colucci (see Contact).

Thank you for sharing with anyone who may be interested and/or on your social media, and please also help to circulate the trailer of the latest ethnographic documentary on domestic violence and suicide Chocolates and Roses (also freely available for screenings by contacting Erminia).

Erminia remains available for training on arts-based, visual and participatory research methods, film screenings and other methodological and visual ethics related activities!

Thanks for supporting the Movie-ment

AMHA is an international, interdisciplinary network of artists and creative practitioners, advocates, researchers and people with lived experience of mental health conditions.

You may find info about the network in this webpage

https://www.essex.ac.uk/research-projects/arts-for-mental-health-advocacy-network

Another ‘Together for Mental Health’ short-film has been showing at several festivals and events and this time is the turn to Premiere it in London at the West London Film Festival on the 26th October 2024.

This was an unplanned film that we did without additional budget because it was a story too important to tell, hoping it will prompt reflection on the need to provide rituals and other collective forms of healing for mothers (and fathers) of unborn children or children who died shortly after birth.

We hope to see a few of you there and please tell your friends and followers!

Watch the trailer here

During the Visiting Scholar Fellowship at The University of Kyoto, three film screenings with discussion have been organized:

1. Breaking the Chains on the 21st February 2024 at 3pm at CSAES (Kyoto) For more info https://kyoto.cseas.kyoto-u.ac.jp/en/event/20240221/
2. ‘Harmoni: Healing together’ on the 22nd Feburary 3.30pm at the National Museum of Ethnology (Osaka) For more info https://www.itsushikawase.com/anthro-film_lab/news.html
3. A collection of 3 unreleased short-films from the ‘Together for Mental Health’ project on the 12th March 3pm at CSAES (Kyoto). More info will soon be posted on CSEAS events page.

These events have been organized with the support of CSEAS and in particular Dr Chika Yamada. We hope to see you some of you or your friends at these events, please share through your networks!

In two days the Movie-ment experience will be taken to Ghana for two workshops: one on writing qualitative and visual research in Mental Health in Ghana and Indonesia (funded by the British Academy) and the other as part of the AHRC-funded Arts and Mental Health Advocacy network. So it is very timely that two articles based on the projects Together for Mental Health and Breaking the Chains have just been published (both as Open Access).

The first is based on the thematic analysis of the transcripts, visual observations and field-notes taken as part of the data collection in Ghana ‘We are all working toward one goal. We want people to become well’: A visual exploration of what promotes successful collaboration between community mental health workers and healers in Ghana

The second is a reflection on the making of the film Breaking the Chains, including ethical decisions and other challenges as well as benefits in using ethnographic documentary to research human rights and mental health ‘Breaking the chains’: reflections on the making of an ethnographic documentary on human rights violations against people with mental illness in Indonesia 

This article accompanies two previous articles linked to this project:

Breaking the chains: ethnographic film-making in mental health

Free from pasung: A story of chaining and freedom in Indonesia told through painting, poetry and narration

We hope you will enjoy the readings and they will be useful to yours and your friends’ and colleagues’ arts-based and visual teaching, research and advocacy activities!

READ EXTRACTS FROM THE INTERVIEW BY THE CENTRE FOR CULTURE AND THE MIND – UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN

“In this blog, I speak with Erminia Colucci, Professor of Visual Psychology and Cultural & Global Mental Health at Middlesex University, London. She is the director of ‘Nkabom: A little medicine, a little prayer’, one of the visual research outputs from the ‘Together for Mental Health’ project which is a Ghana, Indonesia and UK joint initiative exploring collaboration between mental health workers and healers to improve mental health care (see https://movie-ment.org/together4mh). We talked about the motivation behind the Nkabom film, her thoughts about global mental health and collaboration of various mental health care providers/healers and her perception about diagnosis“… GO TO FULL TEXT

The Italian version of ‘Harmoni: Healing together’ will be premièred in Rome on the 3rd December 2022 as part of Feel Mare: Cinema delle donne (Women cinema) organized by Eikon.

Free entry till full, please forward to others who might be able to attend and I hope some of you can make it!

For more info and to circulate the flyer:

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7001274864682557440/

Dear Movie-ment followers and supporters,

we have been silent with our blogs/emails not for absence of activity but at the opposite because we were so busy with dissemination of past visual projects outputs and creating videos for new projects!

We are very happy to announce that the Together for Mental Health films are being screened at many festivals worldwide, where they have also won prizes including as Best Documentary last month!

After screening in Copenhagen last week, ‘Nkabom: A little medicine, a little prayer’ will be finally shown LIVE in London on the12th October at Birbeck Cinema at 6-8.30pm and 18th at Wellcome Collection at 3-6pm with Together for Mental Health teams’members,please click the links to register for your free ticket and we hope to see you there!

ps For regular updates on this project you may also follow our @Together4MH social media pages, in addition to the Movie-ment pages.

Dear Movie-ment friends,

while starting reviewing (and enjoying!) the submitted proposals for our Visual Psychology book and conference, we have re-opened the Call for Papers to include submissions representing all themes we envisaged (and beyond).

If you are a scholar and/or a practitioner/activist working in the cross-over of arts/visuals and Psychology (broadly speaking) consider submitting your proposal and please share with your networks. Submissions from all corners of the world are welcome!

For more information and the submission link click here!

Grazie and Happy Easter/Passover/Eid!