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Characters On The Couch

How a psychologist thinks about your favorite Film & TV characters.

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Leo Hurwitz Strange Victory Hate's Purpose

LEO HURWITZ
STRANGE VICTORY 1948
Hate: Its Tenacity and Its Purpose

November 13, 2017 by Dr. Sandra E. Cohen

Leo Hurwitz’s powerful 1948 WWII documentary, with its ironic title Strange Victory (Watch Here), is just as timely today as it was then. Because the film explores the inescapable question: “If we won, why do we look as if we lost? And, if Hitler died, why does his voice still pursue us through the spaces …

Read moreLEO HURWITZ
STRANGE VICTORY 1948
Hate: Its Tenacity and Its Purpose
Florida Project How A Seemingly Happy Life Can Shatter

FLORIDA PROJECT
How A (Seemingly)
Happy Life Can Shatter

November 9, 2017 by Dr. Sandra E. Cohen

Life doesn’t shatter in an instant, but it can seem like it when you live in a delusionally “happy,”  thumbing your nose at all kinds of rules, sort of “fun.” This is the stuff of mania and mania teeters on a very delicate balance; it can easily come crashing down. Plus manic defiance is no …

Read moreFLORIDA PROJECT
How A (Seemingly)
Happy Life Can Shatter
Leo Hurwitz Native Land Forces Against Labor Rights

LEO HURWITZ
NATIVE LAND 1943
Forces Against Labor Rights  

November 6, 2017 by Dr. Sandra E. Cohen

The Making of Native Land Leo Hurwitz’s Native Land (Watch Film) is a 1942 expose of repressive forces against labor organizing. The film is based on the La Follette Civil Liberties Committee’s (1936-1941) 65 volumes of testimony to the Senate on their investigation. And, the investigation’s results couldn’t be more troubling. The Committee found that …

Read moreLEO HURWITZ
NATIVE LAND 1943
Forces Against Labor Rights  
lion-where-is-home-finding-home-characters-on-the-couch

LION
Where is Home?
A Lost Boy & Adoption
Two Mothers & Jalebi Clues

November 2, 2017 by Dr. Sandra E. Cohen

Where is home? That’s the complicated question at the heart of Garth Davis’ film Lion, for a lost, bewildered, illiterate, scared, traumatized, stoically brave, and lovingly gentle 5-year-old boy, Saroo (Sunny Pawar). This little boy accidentally finds himself on a train taking him far, far from home, where he can’t speak the language and has …

Read moreLION
Where is Home?
A Lost Boy & Adoption
Two Mothers & Jalebi Clues
Leo Hurwitz Heart of Spain In a Dictatorship Human Hearts Don't Matter

LEO HURWITZ
HEART OF SPAIN 1937
In A Dictatorship Human Hearts Don’t Matter  

October 30, 2017 by Dr. Sandra E. Cohen

In a dictatorship, human hearts don’t matter. Leo Hurwitz shows this frightening reality in his powerful film, Heart of Spain 1937. America is now in a fight similar to that of Spain’s democratically elected republic against fascist General Francisco Franco. We need a conduit of empathy similar to Dr. Norman Bethane’s blood transfusions to soldiers in …

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HEART OF SPAIN 1937
In A Dictatorship Human Hearts Don’t Matter  
Wonderstruck Todd Haynes Builds Bridges Out of Lonely Worlds

WONDERSTRUCK
Todd Haynes Builds Bridges
Out Of Lonely Worlds

October 26, 2017 by Dr. Sandra E. Cohen

Loneliness is a silent world. That world is the world Ben (Oakes Fegley), Rose (Millicent Simmonds), and Jamie (Jaden Michael) inhabit in Todd Haynes’ gorgeously filmed and sensitively rendered half-period piece, half-silent and all-around beautifully woven film Wonderstruck. Haynes draws on the visual; on images that speak louder than words, to tell the story of …

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Todd Haynes Builds Bridges
Out Of Lonely Worlds
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Inspiration

“We come to Film and TV to find our hidden stories. If we look deeply into a character’s psyche, there is much to see about ourselves.”

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