Once only addressed in hushed tones and allusions, conversations about mental health have increasingly become more open over the last decade. Manotsava \u2013 National Mental Health Festival by Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies (RNP), National Centre for Biological Sciences and NIMHANS, which aims to bridge the gap between mental health research and regular people, is taking things a step further by organising a film festival ahead of this year\u2019s edition. Titled \u2018Screening the Mind\u2019, the festival will highlight \u2018stories of lived experience and mental illness \u2013 caregiving, survival, hope, and triumph,\u2019 in the words of Natasha Joshi, Chief of Strategy at RNP. <\/p>\n
While panel discussions and fire side chats are a staple and have their importance, films can do something that simply receiving information cannot \u2013 evoke connection. Joshi says, \u201cYou get time to build nuances and bring in perspectives which are harder to access at mainstream festivals. In today\u2019s world of watching everything alone by yourself at home, it\u2019s really important to bring people together, synchronise your biorhythms as you\u2019re going through the same emotions and then when the lights come on, have a conversation and see everybody else who has participated in this empathetic experience with you.\u201d<\/p>\n
The festival will feature six films with the critically-acclaimed Kalki Koechlin-starrer Margarita with a Straw, about a young woman with cerebral palsy\u2019s coming of age, as the concluding film. \u201cWe wanted to have diversity in terms of language and regions, so you will see that reflected in the films,\u201d says Joshi, adding, \u201cWe also looked at how thoughtfully and accurately the film has dealt with the theme (of mental health) and tried to pick films focusing on different angles of mental wellness. For example, Dhoosar is a very good film about Alzheimer\u2019s and looks at the afflicted person but also the people around them. Invisible Chains too, talks about drug use and substance dependence from the user\u2019s perspective.\u201d The other three films include Swagatam following a young couple navigating the husband\u2019s schizophrenia, Khidki featuring Naseeruddin Shah as an elderly man whose closest relationship is with the world from his window, and Enso portraying a father and daughter navigating the trauma of loss.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Once only addressed in hushed tones and allusions, conversations about mental health have increasingly become more open over…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":223972,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[49,48,1554,84,393,20414,394,107244,107243],"class_list":{"0":"post-223971","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-film","11":"tag-health","12":"tag-mental-health","13":"tag-mental-health-awareness","14":"tag-mentalhealth","15":"tag-ncbs-study","16":"tag-nimhans"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223971\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/223972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}