- COURSE COORDINATORS: Khashayar Beigi, PhD candidate and Jan Freeman, MSW, LCSW-C
- LOCATION: 6912 Ayr Lane, Bethesda, MD
- TIME: 7:30 pm
- COSTS: CE credit: $300 ($250 Member rate*) / $175 for General Audience
- Register online
October 29
Anti-Christ (2009)
After their child dies, a therapist and his wife flee to their cabin in the woods, where they hope to mend their emotional wounds. But the grief-stricken couple watches their troubles multiply when very strange things begin to happen. Acclaimed Danish auteur Lars von Trier divides this tale into multiple narratives, revealing a surreal, horrific psychological adventure about the evils of nature, humanity and desire.
- Discussant: Khashayar Beigi, Ph.D. candidate
November 12
Waltz with Bashir (2008)
Director Ari Folman employs vivid black-and-white animation in this Golden Globe-winning film, exploring the memory gaps in his life during his service for the Israeli army in the Lebanese war of the early 1980s. Recounting stories based on recorded interviews with colleagues and friends, Folman relives the horrors of war and dissects the curious coping mechanisms humans use to survive under brutal circumstances. In Hebrew with English subtitles.
- English subtitles
- Discussant: Richard M. Waugaman MD
December 10
Sybil (1976)
Sally Field won an Emmy for her riveting portrayal of the young, shy artist and teacher whose real life story and name came to be equated with what was then known as Multiple Personality Disorder. Joann Woodward portrays her psychoanalyst, Dr. Cornelia Wilbur. The film shows how a child's developing mind lives through unbearable traumas through dissociation, resulting in alternate "personalities" to cope with the abuse, yet leaves the legacy of a fractured mind.
- Discussant: Richard P. Kluft, M.D.
January 21
Turtles Can Fly (2004)
The first film shot in Iraq since the beginning of the war. This Iranian-directed film follows the lives of a group of Kurdish children living on the Iraqi-Kurdish border in a displaced persons tent camp, trying to survive in an endless war zone. It follows a savvy thirteen year old boy who installs satellite dishes in order to translate news of the coming war to local villagers and organizes his fellow orphans into landmine-collection teams so they can earn a living. In Kurdish with English subtitles.
- English subtitles
- Discussant: Marc Nemiroff, Ph.D.
February 11
The Pawnbroker (1964)
One of the first films to deal with the effects of Nazi Germany's concentration camps on their survivors. Sol Nazerman, operator of a pawn shop, and a concentration camp survivor faces a horrid internal conflict. Being engulfed in a New York ghetto Environment, Sol suffers flashbacks. The flashbacks juxtapose concentration camp treatment with ghetto neighborhood treatment.
- Discussant: Jeffery Jay, Ph.D.
March 18
The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo (2009)
The best screen adaptation of an incredibly successful book in years. It is an intense, compelling film of mystery, sexual violence, and revenge. Lisbet is a brilliant young woman, a very determined and creative survivor of abuse. Mikael is a disgraced, investigative journalist, who is hired to investigate the disappearance of a teenage girl 36 years previously. Together, they uncover dark and shocking secrets in the family. In Swedish with English subtitles.
- English subtitles.
- Discussant: Joan Turkus, M.D.
April 8
Taxi Driver (1976)
Martin Scorsese crafts a violently prophetic, gripping vision of urban decay and insanity in which Vietnam vet Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) is 26, a loner in the mean streets of New York City, slipping slowly into isolation and violent misanthropy. In solving his insomnia by driving a yellow cab on the night shift, he grows increasingly disgusted by the low-lifes that hang out at night: "Someday a real rain will come and wash all the scum off the streets."
- Starring: Robert De Niro
- Director: Martin Scorsese
- Discussant: Julio Szmuilowicz, M.D.
