SMHAFF announces 2016 line-up

Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival turns ten this year, and it marks the milestone with a typically thoughtful and thought-provoking programme of theatre, film, music, comedy, visual art and literary events, which it announced today.

New Theatre at SMHAFF

In celebration of its first decade, the festival will, for the first time, also be helping new work be created. A new play from Alan Bissett about the life of Pink Floyd frontman Syd Barrett has been commissioned. Titled One Thinks of It All as a Dream, the play traces Barrett’s struggles with mental health and fame. On 20 Oct at Oran Mor, the performance will be accompanied by Syd Barrett: Dream & Reality, an evening of discussion, archive footage and music celebrating Barrett’s life. The discussion will include Ian Barrett, Syd’s nephew, along with Bissett, Pink Floyd expert John Cavanagh and music journalist Nicola Meighan, who’ll give their thoughts on the unique artist in the year he would have turned 70.

This year sees another first at SMHAFF as the festival appoints dancer and choreographer Emma Jayne Park as its first associate artist. Her interactive dance work for children, Experts In Short Trousers, will tour Scotland as part of the festival. Park and Julia James-Griffiths also present The Box/Thinking In The First Person, a dance double bill exploring the impact of depression. Another stage-based highlight looks to be Where The Crow Flies, a new work by Lisa Nicoll based on interviews with women in East Lothian.

SMHAFF also announced their new collaboration with National Theatre of Scotland’s international community arts festival Home Away, who’ll be co-hosting a day of discussions and events around future projects relating to mental health. Among the speakers are playwright Jo Clifford, who’ll be discussing the impact of prejudice on transgender people, and Pamela Carter, who’ll be spilling the beans on her new play about maverick psychiatrist RD Laing.

There’s also an evening of performance directed by Cora Bissett, which will include music from the Adam World Choir, a choir of transgender/non-binary people from around the world, brought together for the National Theatre of Scotland’s forthcoming Eve/Adam project.

Film Highlights at SMHAFF

As ever, SMHAFF offers up plenty of film highlights too. There are over 50 features and short films screening in this year’s programme, many of which will be accompanied by lively post-screening discussions of the issues involved. Many of the work showing are eligible for the festival's International Film Competition; the winners will be announced at a ceremony in Glasgow in the festival’s first week.

The must-attend film event looks to be the special screening of Kenneth Macpherson’s 30s avant-garde drama Borderline, which will be accompanied by a live score from Rick Anthony and Margaret Tait Award winner Duncan Marquiss, of The Phantom Band. Starring Paul Robeson and the poet HD (Hilda Doolittle), Macpherson’s film was ground-breaking in its progressive treatment of sexuality and race, as well as the cinematic techniques used to portray inner psychological states.

Other film highlights include the European premiere of Touched With Fire, a drama about bipolar disorder starring Katie Holmes; #MyEscape, a doc shot by refugees as they fled Afghanistan, Eritrea and Syria; multi-award winning documentary Shoulder the Lion, which features boxer Katie Dallam, the inspiration for Clint Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby; A Family Affair, Tom Fassaert’s startling piece of family portraiture centred on Marianne Hertz, the Fassaert clan’s nonagenarian matriarch; and Leith is Burning, a screening of Paris is Burning presented by LGBT Health and The State, which will be followed by a dance-based vogue workshop and celebratory end-of-festival Vogue Ball.

Comedy, Music and Art at SMHAFF

If it’s comedy you’re after, Felicity Ward performs her new show 50% More Likely to Die, which traces Ward’s struggles with anxiety. The literary-minded might be interested in cabaret night Flint & Pitch Revue, hosted by poet Jenny Lindsay of Rally & Broad, which will explore mental health from multiple angles. Poet Harry Giles, journalist and author Chitra Ramaswamy, and singer-songwriter Finn Le Marinel will all perform.

For music fans, meanwhile, there’s Music Matters, a special gig organised by Edinburgh Carers’ Council featuring Glasgow’s Admiral Fallow and Edinburgh’s The Cathode Ray. There’s also Music and Mental Health Day in Paisley, which examines the effects of music on mental health through a therapeutic drumming workshop and a screening of the great Brian Wilson biopic Love & Mercy.

There’s also two events at Dundee Literary Festival: That Way Madness Lies, which looks at mental illness in the work of Shakespeare; and a talk from YA authors Juno Dawson and Cat Clarke examining mental health as it affects teenagers in Mind Your Head.

In Edinburgh there's also art show Out of Sight Out of Mind, a powerful and ambitious series of exhibitions and multi-media installations from 100 artists, all with lived experience of mental health issues. The exhibition takes place across several Edinburgh venues including Summerhall.

“We’re delighted to be able to announce such a strong, diverse and vibrant programme for the tenth annual Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival,” said Lee Knifton, Head of the Mental Health Foundation, Scotland. “Over the past decade, we’ve worked with hundreds of artists and organisations across Scotland to challenge stigma, raise awareness and encourage creative responses to mental health.

"By commissioning our first-ever work of theatre, leading our largest ever International Film Competition and launching some high profile collaborations with some of the biggest arts organisations in the country this year, we’re making a big statement about where we hope the festival will be heading over the next ten years. This also seems like a great time to highlight the vital involvement of activists, grassroots organisations and local community groups in making the festival as successful as it is today. Here’s to another ten years.”

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SMHAFF runs from 10-31 October 2016. For ful programme details, go to mhfestival.com