Umbra X attempts to install a new method by which to talk of mental health. It combines anecdotal writing, autobiography, memory, poetry, conversation and philosophy to open up and make transparent the conversations around mental health. Umbra X features exceptional writers from all over the world, who use the occasion of film to talk of characters, groups, and cultures who feature rarely in conversations around mental health - but who should instead, occupy one of its centres.

We call the issue 'Madness'. The term is fraught with associations in history as well as in terms of stigma employed within social and biomedical contexts. Our attempt here, as with any issue of Umbra, is to reclaim a concept, examine its diversity of meanings and enrich it anew, through conversation.

In this Issue
Article

An analysis of the silent ripper, Page of Madness, that combines sociological commentary with criticism, to arrive at an appreciation of a film that identifies it as a yield of the ceremonial aspects of the culture it is borne out of.

Interview

An interview with director Aparna Sanyal about her latest, One Mustard Seed, which includes a discussion of the latest trends in conversation around mental health - and the revisions required there within.

Commentary

The memory of a brief moment of hysteria that ruptured in the face of a screening of Jacques Rivette's near-apocryphal Out 1: Noli Me Tangere.

Review

The review of Ms.45 studies the daily siege laid by a metropolis upon its most vulnerable citizens - and how the resultant vigilantism is therefore, almost an intended consequence of this regime of tyranny.

Essay

A remarkable contemplation of Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielmann, in regards especially to the various methods by which the film sources its pain - through means that are matrilinear - from religion, theatre, and historical event.

Festival Report

An intended review of Sound and Fury that nonetheless evolves into an autobiographical rumination of an incident from the author's childhood - before it resolves itself into an observation of the architecture within the film, and the dreams forged within it.

Umbra X | 'Madness' | March 2020

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