Drawing from Life

Pax Chingawale pedals his bicycle over 20 km a day, visiting his neighbours from house to house. His travels take him to twenty villages, in Zomba District, southern Malawi, Africa. The Bicycle chronicles Pax's journeys as he battles AIDS at the grassroots. Pax works with traditional healers who are influential at the local level yet often contribute unwittingly to the spread of the disease. He bikes around in search of the abandoned and the ill while monitoring the progress of those whose lives are being saved by ARVs (Anti Retro-Virals), a life-extending drug treatment. Pax is not a doctor or nurse. He's a retired government auditor who volunteers with Canada's Dignitas International, helping to create a model for making ARV drugs accessible to the world's most vulnerable: those who live far from hospitals and any formal medical care. Dignitas is headed up by Dr. James Orbinski, who accepted the Nobel Peace Prize for Médecins Sans Frontières. The Bicycle is an intimate look at AIDS through Pax's eyes. It is the sobering yet inspirational story of how local communities can join up with global medical expertise to battle the world's deadliest pandemic - and win.

What happens to people who suffer from mental illnesses and commit violent crimes? Where do they go? How are they treated? Little is known about the facilities-once called asylums for the criminally insane-to which some of these patients are sent. Now known as forensic psychiatric hospitals, these are institutions inside which patients disappear, away from public view for years. Four-time Emmy winner John Kastner has been granted unprecedented access to one such hospital: the Brockville Mental Health Centre. He filmed inside this facility for 18 months, allowing 46 patients and 75 staff to share their experiences with stunning frankness. The result is two remarkable documentaries. The first, NCR: Not Criminally Responsible, premiered at Hot Docs in the spring of 2013 and follows the story of a violent patient released into the community, much to the alarm of his victim and her family. Kastner's film, Out of Mind, Out of Sight, returns to the Brockville Mental Health Centre to follow treatment processes normally hidden from the public, profiling four patients-two men and two women-as they struggle to gain control over their lives, so they can return to a society that often fears and demonizes them.

Invisible City is a moving story of two boys from Regent Park crossing into adulthood - their mothers and mentors rooting for them to succeed; their environment and social pressures tempting them to make poor choices. Turning his camera on the often ignored inner city, Academy-award nominated director Hubert Davis sensitively depicts the disconnection of urban poverty and race from the mainstream.