Clive Holden was born in Nanaimo, grew up in Victoria and now lives in Winnipeg. He is the maker of the short film Hitler! as well as the film Gordon's Head. Through his own publishing house he has recently published a book, FURY, that includes the scripts from those films, and GORDON'S HEAD & HITLER! an audio cd. Holden is currently heard on CBC's Definitely Not The Opera (DNTO) where he provides an ongoing column on poetry and spoken word.

Susan Musgrave
Susan Musgrave draws on her experiences in public schools, psychiatric institutions, and maximum security penitentiaries across the country. Shehas published 20 books, her most recent being for children, DREAMS ARE MORE REAL THAN BATHTUBS. In 1996 she won the CBC/Tilden Canadian Literary Award for Poetry. In 1997-1998 she was Chair of the Writers' Union of Canada.
in response to my polite question...

ALL my books are expression and product of mental illness. But there are essays in GREAT MUSGRAVE specifically about being in the mental hospital (as they still call it in Ireland), one in particular called MAD WITH THE TRUTH. My last two books, FORCING THE NARCISSUS (poetry) and MUSGRAVE LANDING, also (I can bring copies of all of these) and THE EMBALMER'S ART which is a selected poems and has some of the early poems in it.

Jill Stainsby is a consumer/survivor living in Vancouver B.C. with her partner and two cats. She holds an MA from SFU and is currently employed at Riverview Hospital as a Coordinator of Patient Relations. She and her mother both helped produce and participated in the video Within These Walls. It is her first video, and it has won three awards: Best of the Northwest - Documentary (1997); the Hometown Award - Documentary - Public Awareness (1997); and the Canadian International Annual Film Festival - Best Independent Documentary (1998).

Christine Welsh is a Women's Studies professor at University of Victoria and has made two films concerning native issues. She has made several films concerning native issues: Kuper Island: Return to the Healing Circle, Keepers of the Faith, and Women of the Shadows. Welsh is Metis from Lebret Saskatchewan, now living between Salt Spring Island and Victoria. Her current project is a film about Cowichan Indian Sweaters.

Rick Raxlen used to watch "underground" films at Second City in Chicago, on Mondays, about 30 years ago; at the time he saw VERY NICE VERY NICE, made by a Canadian filmmaker named Arthur Lipsett - it inspired Rick, who went to work at the NFB in Montreal and got to be friends with Arthur - and the rest is non-history; Rick worked on his MFA at Bard College under the watchful eye of Adolphus Mekas and played a couple of games of pinball with Gary Hill. At the NFB he got to nod hello to Norman Maclaren as he shuffled past in his slippers . Claude Jutras slept beside him in the front row of the Cinematheque Quebecois many years ago.

Last year Rick got to meet the director of CUJO (1983), a Hollywood film about a rabid St. Bernard...Rick once wrote to John Huston asking to work with him...Rick is the owner of two Charles Bukowski letters and enjoys collecting movie posters from Hollywood depicting Canadiana such as "Canadian Mounties Versus Atomic Men"; he has lived in Victoria for six years. Rick has stopped trying to make meanful feature films with government help and started making meaningless short films with government help.

He is the only member of the Raxlen family in history to have work screened at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and the National Gallery in Ottawa, Ontario...

Rick lives just down the road from the MM theatre and was the first enthusiastic financial contributor to the REEL MADNESS FEST, he knows how hard it is to make a fest work.

Bruce Saunders - Festival Director
Bruce is a consumer/survivor - but more intent on being a producer. He is a lifelong resident of Victoria who is lucky enough to have a wife, two teenage sons, house, two cars and a job as a maintenance gardener. Fondly recognized as the Movie Monday Mogul, Saunders describes the last 5 1/2 years of Movie Monday programming as a crash course, doing workshops and interviews, public speaking, writing, networking and working on as few committees as possible. All of this hard work has made Saunders perhaps the highest profile manic-depressive in Victoria. He holds no degrees, (just first year Fine Arts) but lots of first hand experience and a strong commitment to deal well with his illness and to help others do the same.

Bruce Wallace - Festival Coordinator
As the founding Executive Director of the Victoria Street Community Association, Bruce helped to create The Red Zone: Victoria's Street Newspaper. His interest in alternative media led him to Movie Monday where he has been working on the festival over the last year. His greatest interest is throwing rocks in the ocean with his twin toddlers.