Film festival screening for academic-penned picture

PA 321/10 An academic at The University of Nottingham has drawn on her experiences in psychiatry to script a new film examining the communication challenges faced by mental health patients and the professionals who treat them. The Phone Call , scripted by Dr Victoria Tischler, a lecturer in behavioural sciences in the University's Division of Psychiatry, is to be screened in Nottingham on Friday November 26 as part of the Bang! Short Film Festival at the Broadway Cinema and Media Centre in the city. Dr Tischler said: "The film explores how we make sense of another person's reality. The focus is on mental distress, and the complexities and difficulties inherent in understanding and communicating with someone who may be on the borderline of illness." "The script was inspired by my previous clinical work in psychiatric settings, in particular with patients diagnosed with borderline personality disorder (BPD). I wanted to explore the way that professionals respond to patients with BPD, the communication challenges associated with such encounters, and the emotions that may be experienced by both patients and professional." The five-minute film was funded by the British Psychological Society (BPS) through its Qualitative Methods in Psychology section, and was unveiled at a recent BPS conference on Jubilee Campus where both Dr Tischler and the filmmaker Gaylan Nazhad discussed its making. Gaylan was born in Iraqi Kurdistan and is now based in Nottingham. He has a masters in filmmaking from the Royal Holloway University of London and takes his artistic cues from the likes of Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky and the Kurdish novelist Bachtyar Ali.