Medical Humanities Podcast

Mina Elnaggar, an Egyptian doctor and film-maker, outlines the first Arab forum for medicine in film, Egypt Medfest, in conversation with Medical Humanities Film Correspondent Khalid Ali. Read the Medical Humanities' blog for more on film and media in medicine: https://blogs.bmj.com/medical-humanities/.

In this podcast, Associate Editor Angela Woods interviews Brandy Schillace, Editor-in-Chief of the Medical Humanities journal, at the one-year anniversary of her editorship. Brandy talks about the changes in the journal and what we can expect in the next year; she also takes a moment to celebrate the current and upcoming issues, authors, and contributors. We hope you will join the conversation at...

Three film industry women talk mental health and violence. ‘Mamsous- Deranged’ is a short film about mental health and well-being through the story of three people, who share their experiences with clinical depression and panic attacks. It was directed by Shatha Masoud, an Emarati filmmaker who started her own advertising and video production business. Mamsous won the best ‘Muhr Emarati short film...

Dr Khalid Ali, Medical Humanities film and media correspondent, interviews Dr Amy Hardie at the Sudan Independent Film Festival where she held a training workshop for film students. Dr Amy Hardie is a documentary film-maker with several international awards. Her documentary feature The Edge of Dreaming, was the first Scottish feature documentary to be selected for competition at IDFA in 2009 and w...

Family relationships, traumas from childhood echo in love life, dementia and geriatrics. In this broad interview, Professor of Old Age Psychiatry, Robert Abrams (Weill Cornell University, New York, USA) tells the Screening Room editor of Medical Humanities Khalid Ali about his contributions to the journal. Robert Abrams was interviewed at the Cairo Medfest, the First Arab Forum for Medicine in Fil...

In this podcast, the Screening Room editor of Medical Humanities Khalid Ali explores the role of film in shining a light on mental illlness, dysfnctional families and the rise of religious fanaticism with Egyptian director Ahmed Magdy. Recently introduced to acting, Ahmed talks about his portrayal of three challenging characters: a young man imprisoned in his mother's house in 'Gate of Departure,...

‘Scarred hearts’ is a thought-provoking semi-autobiographical film based on the period Max Belceher (Romanian author) spent in a sanatorium in 1934 recovering from Pott’s disease (Tuberculosis of the spine). In this podcast Khalid Ali explores with Radu Jude (the film director) the physical and mental hardships experienced by patients with TB, as well as the sense of community and companionship th...

In this podcast, Khalid Ali meets Khaled Abol Naga, one of the most popular faces in Egypt and with strong links to the UK. He prefers to be introduced as an “actor”, but is also a well-known filmmaker, a UNICEF goodwill ambassador and a political activist. During his latest visit to London, Khaled Abol Naga spoke with the Screening Room Editor of Medical Humanities about his long and diverse care...

In this podcast, Tom Kinninmont, co-writer of the British film 'The Carer', tells Khalid Ali, Medical Humanities Screening Room Editor, the details of the picture which brings Parkinson's disease, ageing, care for old people, intergenerational problems, stardom egos and Shakespeare quotes all together to the big screen. In this conversation recorded during the Edinburgh film festival, where the fi...

In this podcast, Khalid Ali speaks to Melissa Kent, Hollywood film editor, about her debut as a director with "Bernie and Rebecca", at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, which explores "a lifetime of emotions in 15 minutes". The short film had its UK premiere during the Scottish festival, in June, and will be available on the Internet in January 2017. It has also been selected to three upc...

The three Sudanese sisters The Nightingales (or 'Al-balabil'), who have been singing for 45 years, are doing their first world tour. On their stop for a concert in London, at the end of May, they spoke with Khalid Ali, the Medical Humanities' Screening Room Editor, about their memories as children in Sudan and the power of their music in supporting people with illnesses. A conversation with a lot...

In this podcast, the director Anu Menon talks to the Medical Humanities' Screening Room Editor Khalid Ali about her latest film 'Waiting'. The film explores the relationship between doctor and patients' relatives as well as the bonds established through coma. This is the second of two Medical Humanities' podcasts about the Indian film 'Waiting', which was part of the London Asian film Festival (LA...

In this podcast, Dr James Ruzicka talks about the connection between the story of the film 'Waiting', which he co-wrote, and the real life of a doctor. ‘Waiting’ is directed by Anu Menon and explores the bond established between two people whilst their spouses lie in coma in an hospital. This is the first of two Medical Humanities' podcasts about the Indian film, which will be the closing night ga...

In this podcast, Khalid Ali talks to Simon Field, producer of "Cemetery of Splendour", a film about a lonesome middle-age housewife who tends a soldier with sleeping sickness and falls into a hallucination. The film is the starting point of a conversation about the work of the director Apichatpong Weerasethakul, which legacy is being showcased in the UK: Film retrospective, Tate Modern, 6-8 April;...

The 93 year-old retired doctor Sharif Hatata, Egyptian political activist born in the UK, tells MH Screening Room editor Khalid Ali about his novels, "resistance", junior doctors strike, "poor health care" in Egypt and his film passion. This interview was recorded in Cairo, during The Panorama of the European Film, in November 2015. See the full program of the festival at http://panoramaeurofilm.c...

The president of The Panorama of the European Film, Marianne Khoury, explores the new possibilities opened by the last edition of the festival in Cairo, including the new technologies allowing cinema for those with visual impairment. The film-maker introduced the event in Egypt more than a decade ago, presenting alternative cinema to the country. In this podcast, Marianne Khoury tells Khalid Ali a...

How is positive psychology being used as a coercive strategy in UK government workfare programmes? What effect does this have on the people who receive unemployment benefits, and how have psychologists responded? In this podcast, Lynne Friedli (Hubbub) and Robert Stearn (Birkbeck) discuss their research with BMJ Medical Humanities Associate Editor Angela Woods. “Positive affect as coercive strateg...

Khalid Ali, screening room editor at Medical Humanities, talks to Mohamed Khan, screen writer and actor, and one of the leading directors of of neo-realist cinema in 80s Egypt. They discuss his range of films and the parallels with, and lessons for, practicing medicine.

Khalid Ali, Screening Room editor, reports from the Postgraduate Medical Humanities Conference in Exeter. Here he speaks to Laura Habbe, a PhD student at Trinity College Dublin. Her research focuses around the figure of the mad scientist, often taking the shape of a doctor, in popular fiction of the last two decades of the nineteenth century. She is interested in the question of how the mad scient...

Khalid Ali, Screening Room editor, reports from the Postgraduate Medical Humanities Conference in Exeter. Here he talks with Sarah Jones, a final year PhD student affiliated with the Centre for Medical History at the University of Exeter. Her thesis, which looks at free love and sex radicalism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, is funded by Great Western Research and supervised...

Khalid Ali, Screening Room editor, reports from the Postgraduate Medical Humanities Conference in Exeter. Here he speaks to James Fallon, a specialist registrar in General Adult Psychiatry working in Brighton, about medical education and medical humanities, in particular how the two can be used together to improve training.

In this first podcast from the journal Medical Humanities, editor Deborah Bowman introduces members of her new editorial team: editor of The Screening Room, Khalid Ali, and editor of The Reading Room, Georgia Belam. Together they discusses the vision for the journal. It is an exciting time for Medical Humanities, and the creation of The Reading Room and The Screening Room represent the first stage...