Arts and Resilience Film Festival

Trauma Interest Work Group

1155 E. 60th St., Room 142

7 PM

Free and open to the public

The Trauma Interest Work Group is hosting a film festival as part of its mission to foster interdisciplinary knowledge exchange around trauma-informed scholarship and practices. All films will start at 7 PM.

4/28:  It Shoudda Been Me (Past Film)

5/5:     Any Given Day (Past Film)

5/12:  Deej (Past Film)

5/19:  Minding the Gap (Register)

Films

It Shoudda Been Me

By Doriane Miller

It Shoudda Been Me is a play about youth violence and depression. Doriane Miller, a Professor of Medicine and Director for the Center for Community Health and Vitality at University of Chicago, wrote the play in response to the numbers of her patients who had experienced the escalating gun violence among youth in Chicago.

Any Given Day

Director: Margaret Byrne

A filmmaker with mental illness follows three defendants through a specialized mental health probation program. While sharing their rarely seen struggles, she faces her own challenges, making clear just how precarious the ties between people with mental illness, their families and society can be.

Deej

Director: Robert Rooy

Abandoned by his birth parents and presumed incompetent, DJ Savarese (“Deej”) found not only a loving family but also a life in words, which he types on a text-to-voice synthesizer. As he makes his way through high school and dreams of college, he confronts the terrors of his past, society’s obstacles to inclusion, and the sometimes paralyzing beauty of his own senses. In his advocacy on behalf of other nonspeaking autistics, he embraces filmmaking and poetry, and discovers what having a voice can truly mean.

Minding the Gap

Director: Bing Liu

Three young men bond across racial lines to escape volatile families in their Rust Belt hometown. Ten years later, while facing adult responsibilities, unsettling revelations force them to reckon with their fathers, their mothers, and each other.