June
01
The award-winning documentary, Struggle in Paradise, about his Faces of Homelessness portrait project
| Thursday, June 9 5:00 PM – 6:15 PM PTFaces of Homelessness Dare to see Break the Barrier Open Your Heart  Registration is required for this free live private Zoom event.Please join The Friends of the Semel Institute and the Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital Board of Advisors for an Open Mind program with Stuart Perlman, PhD, Psychologist/Psychoanalyst/Artist, who made the award-winning documentary, Struggle in Paradise, about his Faces of Homelessness portrait project. This film won the Gradiva “Best Movie of the Year” Award, from the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis. Dr. Perlman reminds us that these homeless individuals, too, are to be valued:“If we can see into their faces and learn their stories — their hopes, dreams, accomplishments and fears — we can no longer pretend that they don’t exist…we can no longer look the other way.”Dr. Perlman has painted and extensively interviewed over 250 people living and dying on the streets, telling their life stores and how they ended up in their predicament. Dr. Perlman uncovers the deeper story. We can learn from our emotional reactions to one of the most misunderstood moral crises of our time. Many of these people are followed up years later to find out what happened to them over time.This project has been featured in print on the front page of the Los Angeles Times, and in other international publications including The Guardian (London), Taipei Times (Taiwan), Vanity Fair Italia and a cover story of the Jewish Journal.Stuart Perlman has been a psychologist and psychoanalyst in private practice in West Los Angeles for over 40 years. He received a PhD from UCLA in Clinical Psychology, and a second PhD in Psychoanalysis. He has published many widely quoted articles in psychoanalytic journals on treating trauma survivors, and authored the book, The Therapist’s Emotional Survival: Dealing with the Pain of Exploring Trauma. His new books, Open Your Heart Through Art: Painting Human Souls and their Stories, and Struggle in Paradise, are about homeless individuals, featuring his moving oil-on-canvas portraits and their life stories. Dr. Perlman won the 2016 Los Angeles County Psychological Association’s Social Justice Award. The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors gave him an award in 2017 for his work on behalf of homeless people.Kenneth B. Wells, MD, MPH, will join Dr. Perlman in conversation. Dr. Wells received his MD from UCSF and his MPH from UCLA. He is a psychiatrist, a Senior Scientist at RAND, Professor of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at the David Geffen School of Medicine and Professor of Health Services at the UCLA School of Public Health. He directs the Semel Institute Health Services Research Center which focuses on improving quality of care for psychiatric and neurological disorders across the lifespan. He is the Principal Investigator of the NIMH-UCLA/RAND Center for Research on Quality in Managed Care and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Community Partnership Initiative. He is also Co-Director of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation UCLA Clinical Scholars Program and Chair of the Community Health Improvement Collaborative.Dr. George Atwood, Professor Emeritus, Rutgers University described Struggle in Paradise: “Magnificent … anyone who views it with an open mind and an open heart will find it to be transforming — the homeless men and women interviewed and painted are revealed as human beings like all of us, and seeing them and listening to their stories not only helps us to understand them, but also returns us to ourselves and to our own stories. The lives and experiences of the homeless show great tragedy; but they also show heroism, and beauty.” Fine Art Connoisseur Magazine proclaims the portraits as “Great Art Worldwide”.Learn more at his website: www.stuartperlmanartist.com To watch videos of our past Open Mindprograms, please visit www.friendsofnpi.org/open-mind-videos or our YouTube Channel.< |
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