Programmation

Participant(s): Bernard Arcand, Benoît Côté, Xavier De Vriendt, Annie Frenette, Yvan Pageau, Luc Vigneault.

During Mental Health Week, the National Film Board (NFB), in collaboration with Folie/Culture, presented the world premiere of the short animated film That Crazy Game Called Life, directed by the collective Kiwistiti.

The Project

That Crazy Game Called Life was a part of the wave of new initiatives through which the NFB favoured community involvement and gave voice to those on the fringe of society. This short animated film was intended for broadcast on Internet on the CITIZENShift site.

The director, Annie Frenette, chose to animate extracts from the Petit dictionnaire des idées reçues sur la folie et autres considérations, edited by Folie/Culture. Using humour and poetry, she debunks our prejudices on madness. In a board game, a pawn moves forward to the rhythm of harsh and troubling definitions. This bittersweet short film is a community action, a two-way mirror on an age-old taboo.

The projection of the film was accompanied by the presentation of two web-docs, directed by Henry Bernadet for the CITIZENShift site. He focused mainly on two axes: the creative process of Annie Frenette and the social process involved in raising awareness on the part of groups that work in the area of mental health.

The Round Table

After the reading of a note by anthropologist Bernard Arcand, four guests participated in a round table discussion on the theme related to prejudice and stress: “Les préjugés c’est stressants.” The participants were: Annie Frenette, director of the film That Crazy Game Called Life, Luc Vigneault, ex-mental health patient, Yvan Pageau, co-author of the Petit dictionnaire des idées reçues, and Xavier De Vriendt, director of hospital and professional services at the Robert-Giffard hospital in Québec City.
Collaboration: Office national du film du Canada, Atelier de la mezzanine