Introducing: 37 pieces of flair

 37 pieces of flair is a season of arts and cinema hosted by The Star and Shadow Cinema and The NewBridge Project. The Season will explore and challenge the increased consciousness of mental health and how it affects all of our lives, with a diverse programme of visual art, film, talks and conversation across two prominent cultural venues in Newcastle upon Tyne.

Why you may not find many references to mental health in this season about mental health?

 Unlike countless other mental health themed film seasons or exhibitions, 37 pieces of flair will focus its attention less upon the individual stories of enduring mental health problems and rather take a step back in an attempt to grasp a broader look at, or investigation of, the society and its culture from which they emerge.

For example - Taking the expression ‘before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure that you are not in fact just surrounded by complete arseholes’ (misattributed to Novelist William Ford Gibson). You could say we are perhaps on the lookout for arseholes in a sea of soaring diagnoses.

Mark Fisher, in his portrait of our current predicament -Capitalist Realism - rather succinctly surveys this territory: “This pathologization already forecloses any possibility of politicization. By privatising these problems – treating them as if they were caused only by chemical imbalances in the individuals’ neurology and/or by their family background – any question of social systemic causation is ruled out”.  This is not to discredit nor underestimate the psychological experiences of the countless individuals who identify with mental health diagnoses but rather, to explore the social, political, economic and anthropological terrain from which they occur.

Each film will be accompanied by guest speakers, Q+A discussions, and a selection of pre-feature movie shorts.

Cinema Screenings / The Star and Shadow Cinema

Publication / Lloyd-Wilson

Exhibition/Events/ The NewBridge Project

ADVANCE TICKETS AVAILABLE: 

http://www.wegottickets.com/event/284574

Wednesday 3rd September

The Stuart Hall Project,   dir: John Akomfrah, UK 2013, 103 mins, cert. 12A

Thursday 11th September

Kenny,   dir: Clayton Jacobson, Australia 2006, 99mins, cert PG

Thursday 25th September

By Order of Things (Vom Ordnen der Dinge),   dir: Jürgen Brügger / Jörg Haaßengier, Germany 2013, 80mins, cert. PG

Wednesday 8th October 

Dr. Strangelove (or  How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb),    dir: Stanley Kubrick, USA 1964, 95mins, cert. PG

Exhibition 

– The NewBridge Project

The film screenings will be followed up by a '37 pieces of flair' exhibition hosted by The NewBridge Project in the centre of Newcastle upon Tyne from November – December.

Full exhibition listings tbc.

Host Cinema: The Star and Shadow Cinema

Host Exhibition venue: The NewBridge Project