Our world is inundated by film. Our best stories are told on movie screens, on televisions, on smartphones and laptops. Film argues that on-screen storytelling is the most ubiquitous format for art to intersect with health and well-being, offering a way for us to appreciate, understand and even
celebrate the most nuanced and complex notions of what it means to be healthy through the stories that we watch unfolding. Clinicians use film to better understand their patients, and individuals use film to better understand themselves and each other.
Using case histories and based on academic research from a range of disciplines, this book explores how film can be used by clinicians and healthcare practitioners to better understand patients; by individuals to better understand themselves and others; and – perhaps most important of all
– by societies as a tool in the fight against the stigma of illness. This book not only makes the case that film keeps us healthy, but also tells us how. After all, nothing quite moves us like the movies.
Exploring the potential for storytelling as a creative practice for health and well-being, Michael Wilson considers how the art form might help us reconsider the power relationships in healthcare contexts and restore agency to patients, in partnership with medical professionals.
Storytelling is explored not simply as a means of conveying information and experience from one person to another but as an act of listening, a process for thinking, evaluating and understanding. Wilson reflects on his over thirty of years of researching and practising storytelling, and blends his
experience with a collection of case studies representing diverse approaches to storytelling for health, including theatre, stand-up comedy, writing, visual arts and digital storytelling. Most importantly, storytelling is approached not from the point of view of the medical practitioner or educator,
or even the patient, but through the lens of those who tell stories as a creative and everyday practice. It is a book with the storyteller at its core.