Institutions, Trauma & Love

Barri Cohen, Brian Logie and Face2Face host David Peck talk about Unloved: Huronia’s Forgotten Children, trauma, empathy and love, “othering”, labels and wood

carving, oppression, institutions and junk science, capitalism and dehumanization and why it’s so important to never forget.   

For more info head here and www.remembereveryname.com

Blurb:

Filmmaker Barri Cohen leads part detective story, part social history in UnLoved: Huronia’s Forgotten Children as she uncovers the truth about Alfie and Louis, her two long-dead half-brothers. They were institutionalized at the Huronia Regional Centre in Orillia in the 1950s, with one brother unceremoniously buried in secret in an unmarked grave as a small child. Their lives were cut short, but their story stands as a microcosm of the immense tragedy of the western world’s 20th century disastrous treatment of intellectually disabled children and youth - a question preoccupies the film: how do we allow ourselves to dehumanize the most vulnerable people in our care?

UnLoved: Huronia’s Forgotten Children is a heartbreaking yet redemptive work that moves outwards from a highly personal and painful family secret to an investigation of hidden, searing truths about an entire government-enabled system of institutional cruelty and ugliness against vulnerable children. Yet, humanity is hopefully restored by assembling community and survivor testimony, along with the filmmaker’s insistence that these experiences be fully recognized and memorialized.

About Barri:

Barri Cohen is an award-winning writer, director, and producer whose career spans over 20 years of making independent documentaries and television series across

a range of genres from lifestyle to comedy for general and specialty audiences in Canada and around the world. Many of Cohen’s independently produced and

directed works involve health, mental health, and environmental, social justice stories. Among her awards and nominations include those for her feature documentary

Toxic Trespass: Children’s Health & The Environment & the recently co-produced Toxic Beauty — Phyllis Ellis’s multiple Canadian Screen Award winning and

internationally nominated feature documentary for White Pine Pictures and documentary Channel which had its premiere at the 2019 Hot Docs International

Documentary Film Festival. Cohen also produced Ellis’s Canadian Screen Award nominated documentary for CBC, Girls Night Out. Cohen is the past National

Executive Chair of the Documentary Organization of Canada, past editor and publisher and current columnist of Point of View Magazine and was the co-chair and co

founding member of the Hot Docs International Documentary Film Festival. She is currently developing a family drama/comedy series, writing a memoir

collection with essays, and studying psychoanalysis.

Image Copyright and Credit: Barri Cohen and White Pine Pictures

F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.

For more information about David Peck’s podcasting, writing and public speaking please visit his site here.

With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound

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