We’re excited to share details about a film created with the Bristol Hearing Voices Network that will be screened on Monday 27 June at 6pm (including an intro Q&A) as part of the Watershed Cinema’s ‘Psychosis on Screen’ season.
To find out more, and book a ticket, see: www.watershed.co.uk/whatson/7319/in-the-real/, www.inthereal.org or www.bhvn.org.uk.
‘The film is like a jewel that you need to hold up to the light to see it sparkle. It is rich with the lives of ordinary people leading a life that is far from ordinary and can be mysterious. It is about a struggle to make sense of the unusual and a desire to be understood.’
Errol, Bristol Hearing Voices Network
Watch the Trailer
The following is taken directly from the Watershed website and shared with the aim of raising awareness of this great initiative.
For the past three years, filmmaker and psychoanalyst in training Conor McCormack has documented Bristol Hearing Voices Network – a self-help group for people who hear voices and have other unusual experiences.
Strange and wonderful, intimate and emotionally affecting, In the Real is an observational collaborative documentary which goes to the heart of the voice-hearing experience. Who, or what, are the voices that only these men can hear? What do they say and what do they mean? And how does hearing voices transform their sense of self and world?
Bristol filmmaker Conor McCormack (Christmas with Dad) gained access to this remarkable community of voice-hearers forged on the medicated margins of society. From outpatient clinic to riverside, bedsit to park bench, In the Real offers a rare insight into the inner logic of each character’s madness through the intimate moments of the everyday. By exploring the ways voice-hearers negotiate the complex deadlocks of psychosis and help each other to make sense of their unusual experiences, the film shows how, contrary to popular misconception, hearing voices can play a positive, creative and stabilising role in people’s lives.
These are stories of resilience and survival, of loss and love, of the creation of a world outside the mainstream, a place where one can remain open to all kinds of human experience. These are powerfully emotive stories that explore the boundaries of human subjectivity, taking the viewer to a place where the available mental health discourses start to break down. In telling these stories, In the Real asks new questions about the nature and reality of mental health and illness.
In the Real was supported creatively and financially by Hearing the Voice – an interdisciplinary study of voice hearing based at Durham University, funded by the Wellcome Trust. The film will be presented by Angela Woods from Hearing the Voice.
Ticket prices: £4.50. Aged 24 or under? You can see any screening at any time for £4.50.
Book online and collect at the Watershed’s box office, or call 0117 927 5100
