The Camera as Mirror: Movie-Making in Palliative Care
Documentary film and discussion with Dr Amy Hardie
Tuesday 19th March 2013
6-7.30pm followed by wine reception
Lecture Theatre 183, Old College, University of Edinburgh
The film is 45 minutes long, following a ground-breaking group bringing people with secondary cancer together. Five very different characters meet at Maggie’s Dundee to help and support each other through life with terminal cancer.
Meet a group of very different women who come together every Tuesday in Dundee. They laugh, they cry, they exchange shopping and cooking tips, and they support each other through life after a diagnosis of secondary cancer. One in three of us will develop cancer: it is a future most of us dread. This documentary shows that the reality is a bit more interesting, complicated and joyful than our dread – because once you’ve had the worst diagnosis, what is left to fear?
Tuesdays was the result of an innovative shared filming process between Dr Amy Hardie and the Maggie’s centre group. It is currently being used by Maggie’s to shift the focus from medicine to the patient, bridging the gap between medical and patient perspectives and developing understanding through practice.
It is anticipated that this film will generate discussion and facilitate cross-disciplinary thinking about terminal diagnosis and questions surrounding how we provide support at the palliative care stage from the perspective of the patient. We also want to consider the role of narrative, particularly how the experience of being terminally ill is narrated and how that narrative and its meaning might best be shared and presented to small groups and wider audiences through film.