To Contact Us - please e-mail mross@cuttingforstone.com
Cutting For Stone
Films About Mental Illness
The term Cutting For Stone as depicted in the paintings
of Bosch and Bruegel, was a surgical technique used in the middle
ages for extracting the "Stone of Madness". It may have
been mostly fake, and it didn't work. Despite the advancement of
knowledge, of effective medical treatment, less than fifty percent of
sufferers receive treatment today. Many experience worse fates than
people with these illnesses thirty and forty years ago. It is
estimated that there are 500,000 seriously mentally ill in American
Prisons. A common outcome of a mental illness today is homelessness.
Schizophrenia in Focus
A 54 minute documentary created by
psychiatrist and filmmaker David Laing Dawson. Dawson has been
investigating schizophrenia for over 30 years as a psychiatrist,
scientist, as well as a writer and filmmaker. Using excerpts from his
previous writings and films, dramatizations and first person accounts,
as well as an interview with Dr Richard O'Reilly, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Western Ontario, the film explores the nature of this disease.
This film is available at $29.95 from Createspace (an Amazon company) BUY NOW
My Name is Walter James Cross
Walter tried to kill himself and failed, so he decided to tell his
story instead. Finding an abandoned theater, he stands on the stage
alone and recounts his descent into mental illness, into schizophrenia.
Created by a psychiatrist who has worked for many years with
schizophrenic patients, this compelling dramatic monologue presents an
accurate depiction of a devastating, costly, much maligned, and
misunderstood illness. This program has been screened at film festivals
and professional conferences, including the American Psychiatric
Association Annual Meeting, and was well received by doctors and nurses
as well as patients and their families. (53 minutes). available from Createspace for $29.95: BUY NOW
The Brush, the Pen and Recovery
A 33 minute documentary film of the Cottage Studio in Hamilton Ontario, Canada. The studio is a place for those with schizophrenia to go to paint. The
artists at the Cottage Studio had the opportunity to prepare for and
hang a show of their work at an opening at the Gallery
on the Bay
in Hamilton at the end of June 2009.
The
documentary deals with their preparation for the show, the show
itself, and in-depth interviews with three of the artists.
While the story is about the preparation for a serious gallery
opening for these artists culminating in the opening itself, the
interviews explore the very issue of schizophrenia, the lives of
the people it affects and the role of artistic expression in their
recovery.
"I loved this film. Without shying away from the realities of having a
serious and persistent mental illness,
three courageous people talk of their struggles, their dreams and their
hope. Educational, accurate, human, and compelling."
Dr. Peter Cook, Head of Service
Schizophrenia & Community Integration Service
St. Joseph's Healthcare
Hamilton, On, Canada and Associate Clinical Professor, Department of
Psychiatry & Neurobehavioral Sciences, McMaster University.
18
year old Philip Renold finds himself locked in a Mental Hospital. He
doesn't understand why his family has abandoned him, why his
friends have turned against him. He struggles to find his
way through the horror that has become his life and it all seems
hopeless until he meets a young woman also suffering from
schizophrenia. An engrossing psychological thriller and an accurate
and honest depiction of serious mental illness.
critics
say: "riveting" and "a far truer and rawer depiction
of schizophrenia than you have seen before."
