Healing: Reimagining the Future

A short film screening at the CCA, exploring how we can reimagine the future to make room for healing.

Reimagining the Future

What could the world look like if it was run by people and communities who have always been marginalised? What if we could reimagine our social structures and systems to make room for healing?

This short film programme envisions new worlds through the work of five diverse filmmakers from across the world, conjuring dreams of a sensitive and fluid society where social, political, and even physical rules no longer apply.

There will be a post-screening discussion with writer and creative Tomiwa Folorunso, filmmaker and animator Holly Summerson, whose film Birdwatching is screening in the programme, Drew Taylor-Wilson, co-director of Sanctuary Queer Arts, alongside Yasoda Winmill-Hermann, Young Company member at Sanctuary Queer Arts.

BSL intepretation will be provided for the introduction and panel discussion. 

Book Here

Featured Films

Earth Mother, Sky Father, Kordae Henry, USA, 8m

Filmmaker and VFX artist Kordae Henry conjures a beautiful Afro-Futuristic ceremony located in 2030 Congo. Through dance, he re-imagines a decolonised nation where the natural and the technological collide in a ritual for “the God of Rare Earth”.

Birdwatching, Holly Summerson, UK, 4m

Scottish based animator Holly Summerson presents a sensitive ode to queer love between two birdwatchers in a rural area. As they struggle between isolation and independence, their power to transform into birds brings them together.

Cut the Chit Chat, Léa Forest, France, 27m

French filmmaker Léa Forest speaks with a diverse group of teenage boys aged 12-18 in a barbershop and asks them about love, feelings and their relationship with the world. The film manages to transform from a simple documentary idea to a meditative exploration of masculinity and its constructed notions in today’s society.

Content notes: Derogatory language, references to homophobia.

Sign Night, Cathy Mager, UK, 6m

Two lovers share a poetic conversation in British Sign Language projected onto buildings in Bristol during the pandemic. Artist Cathy Mager and performers Vilma Jackson and Sophie Stone explore the communication barriers and social isolation that deaf people have experienced especially during lockdown by dreaming about a future that they could belong in.

Muxes, Iván Olita, USA, 10m

Director Ivan Olita explores the town Juchitàn in Oaxaca, Mexico and its unique world of the muxes, the country’s third gender. The film dares us to imagine a world where people’s fluidity gets embraced by society and people can carry fully their own agency in their life such as how they feel and who they love.

The End of Suffering, Jacqueline Lentzou, Greece, 14m

Greek director Jacqueline Lentzou constructs a lyrical dialogue between a woman and the Universe. She contemplates a utopic world existing in Mars where people dream awake, fight for love and and human-made rules don’t exist.

Content notes: Distress

About the Programme

Healing is a programme in three parts curated by Theo Panagopoulos for the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival, as part of Film Hub Scotland’s New Promoters Scheme.

Almost two years since the world turned upside down, we have a unique opportunity to reflect on how we can make space for healing in uncertain times. These events open up a series of conversations around healing, exploring it as an individual and collective process, as well as a discourse that allows us to reimagine the world we live in.

These screenings aim to address mental health in a calm, reflective and explorative manner, creating accessible and trigger-sensitive experiences for audiences with lived experience of mental ill health. Find out more here.

Supported by Film Hub Scotland, part of the BFI’s Film Audience Network, and funded by Screen Scotland and Lottery funding from the BFI.

Banner Image: Earth Mother, Sky Father, dir. Kordae Henry

Booking Information