Friday Evening, October 12, 2007
7PM Wind & Cheese - 7:30 Program - Admission Free
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Discussants: Irvin Milowe, M.D., Florida Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, and Thelma C. Altschuler, Author: The Art of Being Human

Like many of Bergman's best pictures, Autumn Sonata is so intense in its emotions and so masterful in its presentation that the world of its characters overwhelms our senses. This film, about the confrontation between a world-famous pianist and her long-neglected, adult daughters, is so compelling that we cannot divert our thoughts from the piling of confessions, furies, and heartbreaks transpiring on the screen. Towering performances from Ingrid Bergman and Liv Ullmann and outstanding photography make Autumn Sonata (nominated for two Oscars and winner of ten other awards) an indelible experience. Its depictions of generational and familial conflicts are ideal food for meaningful and clinically useful psychoanalytic thought

Thursday Evening, November 29, 2007
7PM Wine & Cheese - 7:30 Program - Admission Free
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Discussants: Frederic J. Levine, Ph.D., Florida Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, and Rabbi Chaim Casper Winner of many awards,

Trembling Before G-d is a powerful documentary about the dilemma of being a Gay Orthodox Jew, and about the universal need to belong -- to parents, to community, to a set of rules. Like many religious traditions, the Torah treats homosexuality as an intolerable and unacceptable sin – but, naturally, Orthodox Jewry has its share of gay members. Trembling Before G-d invites us into the lives of actual gay and lesbian Jews from many cities and backgrounds, illuminating their often heartbreaking struggles to fulfill both of their loves with meaning and self-respect (often hiding their faces and identities from the camera). As the Director tells us, the dash in the film’s title (G-d) alludes to the Hebrew tradition of not writing the name of God, and also to the many mysteries that surround sexuality: Why are some people gay and others not? And why reject gay people, if God created everything and everyone, including them?

Friday Evening, February 22, 2008
7PM Savory Indian Snacks* - 7:30 Program - Admission Free
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WATER

Discussant: Saida Koita, M.D., Florida Psychoanalytic Society and Institute

Mehta's superb conclusion to her "trilogy of the elements:" Fire, with its forthright depiction of the triumph of a forbidden, lesbian love; Earth, which explored the partition of India and its consequences; and now Water, centers on the plight of widows in India. Set at the tail end of the Colonial period, when Gandhi’s movement was just beginning, Water chronicles the lives of a group of widows (one just eight years old), who are ostracized by tradition (and by families who don’t want to support them) to a special ashram on the Ganges. An exquisite film that is serene on the surface yet roiling underneath, it neatly parallels these women’s oppression by cruel ancient customs to India’s subjugation under British colonialism.Shifting between spiritual inquiry and the romantic drama of one widow who struggles for the right to marry and rejoin the outside world, Water flows with the simplicity of a fairy tale, yet emerges as a film of extraordinary richness and complexity. Its shattering ending paradoxically strikes a calmly assuring note of life’s wondrous beauties and endless possibilities.”

Friday Evening, March 14, 2008
7PM Wind & Cheese - 7:30 Program - Admission Free
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Discussant: Jon Shaw, M.D., Florida Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, and University of Miami Miller School of Medicine

Things first began to go wrong, Buñuel teases us, in Spain in 1808, when Napoleon's troops arrived to liberate Toledo. In the opening scenes of his savage comedy, The Phantom of Liberty, the soldiers execute those who would not be liberated. "Down with freedom!" cries one of the doomed. The French and American revolutions have unleashed freedom on a defenseless world, and nothing will ever be the same again.

Framed as a series of interlocking yet disconnected stories, The Phantom of Liberty is nevertheless strangely lucid; with the heightened reality of a dream. Buñuel leads us effortlessly from one wacky parable to the next. We ought to be breathless but we aren't because his editing makes everything seem to follow with inevitable logic. It doesn't of course, but that's freedom's fault: If people want liberty, they shouldn't expect to be able to count on anything. The Phantom of Liberty is a tour de force, a triumph by a director at the height of his powers (at age 75) confronting almost impossible complications and contradictions and mastering them.

Friday Evening, April 18, 2008
7PM Wind & Cheese - 7:30 Program - Admission Free
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Discussant: Jorge Casariego, M.D., Florida Psychoanalytic Society and Mercy Hospital

Like the distillation of countless family legends that are treasured by Cubans who were forced to flee their homeland, this film carefully and poetically re-creates that older, beloved Cuba. Starring Andy Garcia, who also directed, as a nightclub owner and Bill Murray as an expatriate American writer who provides running commentary on the action, the film showcases the music of that period, and its characters carry themselves with grace and confidence. Lost City was a labor of love for both Garcia and screenwriter Guillermo Cabrera Infante, both of whom came from that Cuba.The anti-Batista revolution’s effects on Cuba’s upper and middle classes are seen through the prism of one family: Patriarch Federico, a professor, hopes for democratic change, while two of his sons become ardent members of the revolution. The eldest son (Garcia) believes he and his nightclub can ride out the storm even as the political conflict shatters his family.