States of Mind
Films that explore the fractures and vulnerabilities of the human experience.
9 products
Scissere
A first-person foray into the disorienting realm between reason and sensation, Peter Mettler’s _Scissere_ is an incorrigibly inventive first feature film. It deploys a seemingly inexhaustible repertoire of optical effects, in rendering the experiences of a mental patient wandering outside institutional confines for the first time in many years. Wide-eyed and frightened, the central figure, Brun...
Juanicas
This autobiographical first film is a heartbreaking chronicle of a family struggling with rootlessness and mental illness. When she learns that her brother Juan has returned to Québec after spending some time in their birthplace, Mexico, Karina Garcia Casanova decides to film him. Her purpose is clear from the start: she is not interested in home movies, she is going to make a real film. And he...
Primas
Primas is an evocative portrait of two cousins, Rocío and Aldana, Argentinian teenagers who, in the wake of heinous acts of violence that interrupted their childhoods, will free themselves from the shadows of their past. Travelling in Argentina and Montréal, the girls come of age having revelatory experiences in their everyday lives; learning dance, mime, theatre, circus and visual arts. They...
Manic
Manic est le récit du voyage personnel de la réalisatrice Kalina Bertin pour comprendre l'impact dévastateur de la maladie mentale sur sa famille. Convaincue que son père tient la pièce manquante d'un puzzle familial, elle enquête sur cet homme insaisissable, connu sous de multiples identités : gourou de secte, escroc professionnel, élu de Dieu, et père de quinze enfants issus de cinq familles ...
Faded Photograph
Subscription access
_Faded Photograph _retraces the life of the filmmaker’s father, who died when she was 12, through a montage of his memoirs. Drawing on family films and the diaries he kept throughout his life, Fanie Pelletier tells the story of an ordinary man whose personal memories echo those of an entire generation emerging from Quebec’s Great Darkness, a period when liberation also meant losing one’s bearin...
Pinocchio
Eric is working his way around the world crewing on ships. He seems to be living the life he’s always dreamed of until he gets arrested in Brazil, awaiting deportation to Canada. Éric’s sister, filmmaker André-Line Beauparlant, gradually pierces the mystery surrounding her brother, a man of prodigious imagination, who has mastered the art of deception as the ultimate way of life.
Alexandre the Fool
Ten years after a psychotic episode on the South China Sea flipped his life upside down, Alex, a sensitive, refined, and schizophrenic man is at a crossroads. His grand-mother and confidant, who would like to die with her soul at peace, insists that he tries to find a girlfriend. His encounter with a young psychotic woman gives birth to an ardently passionate relationship, making him slowly dri...
Manor
Since the 1990s, the old Gaulin Manor has housed erstwhile residents of the Saint-Hyacinthe psychiatric hospital. Some thirty inhabitants occupy this alternative lodging space, their salvation after the wave of deinstitutionalization that one day threw them into the streets with no resources. Profit rules, and so this motel at the world’s end will be destroyed to fill the pockets of promoters. ...
Scissere
A first-person foray into the disorienting realm between reason and sensation, Peter Mettler’s _Scissere_ is an incorrigibly inventive first feature film. It deploys a seemingly inexhaustible repertoire of optical effects, in rendering the experiences of a mental patient wandering outside institutional confines for the first time in many years. Wide-eyed and frightened, the central figure, Brun...
Juanicas
This autobiographical first film is a heartbreaking chronicle of a family struggling with rootlessness and mental illness. When she learns that her brother Juan has returned to Québec after spending some time in their birthplace, Mexico, Karina Garcia Casanova decides to film him. Her purpose is clear from the start: she is not interested in home movies, she is going to make a real film. And he...
Primas
Primas is an evocative portrait of two cousins, Rocío and Aldana, Argentinian teenagers who, in the wake of heinous acts of violence that interrupted their childhoods, will free themselves from the shadows of their past. Travelling in Argentina and Montréal, the girls come of age having revelatory experiences in their everyday lives; learning dance, mime, theatre, circus and visual arts. They...
Manic
Manic est le récit du voyage personnel de la réalisatrice Kalina Bertin pour comprendre l'impact dévastateur de la maladie mentale sur sa famille. Convaincue que son père tient la pièce manquante d'un puzzle familial, elle enquête sur cet homme insaisissable, connu sous de multiples identités : gourou de secte, escroc professionnel, élu de Dieu, et père de quinze enfants issus de cinq familles ...
Faded Photograph
Subscription access
_Faded Photograph _retraces the life of the filmmaker’s father, who died when she was 12, through a montage of his memoirs. Drawing on family films and the diaries he kept throughout his life, Fanie Pelletier tells the story of an ordinary man whose personal memories echo those of an entire generation emerging from Quebec’s Great Darkness, a period when liberation also meant losing one’s bearin...
Pinocchio
Eric is working his way around the world crewing on ships. He seems to be living the life he’s always dreamed of until he gets arrested in Brazil, awaiting deportation to Canada. Éric’s sister, filmmaker André-Line Beauparlant, gradually pierces the mystery surrounding her brother, a man of prodigious imagination, who has mastered the art of deception as the ultimate way of life.
Alexandre the Fool
Ten years after a psychotic episode on the South China Sea flipped his life upside down, Alex, a sensitive, refined, and schizophrenic man is at a crossroads. His grand-mother and confidant, who would like to die with her soul at peace, insists that he tries to find a girlfriend. His encounter with a young psychotic woman gives birth to an ardently passionate relationship, making him slowly dri...
Manor
Since the 1990s, the old Gaulin Manor has housed erstwhile residents of the Saint-Hyacinthe psychiatric hospital. Some thirty inhabitants occupy this alternative lodging space, their salvation after the wave of deinstitutionalization that one day threw them into the streets with no resources. Profit rules, and so this motel at the world’s end will be destroyed to fill the pockets of promoters. ...
