The Reel Madness Film Festival is much more than showing movies, and it is much more than public education on mental illnesses.

Consumer run enterprise. The festival is a project of Bruce Saunders who has successfully produced Movie Monday for the last five years at Eric Martin Pavilion's theatre. Bruce provides a completely consumer run and independent program that is highly visible and respected in Victoria for its consistency, good value and positive interaction between community and consumers. Last year Saunders successfully hosted 55 events, averaging 83 people per event in this 100-seat theatre. Often the audience overflows into the extra seating to watch the program on a monitor in the lobby.

Consumer opportunities. The festival will provide opportunities to both consumers of mental health services and professionals to work together on the event organizing and program delivery. Further consumer opportunities will be created as the festival promotes consumer-produced arts and entertainment and a forum for educational materials and presentations. The festival will also be video recorded by a team of consumers with an interest and talent in consumer-based education.

Partnerships. The festival is about bringing people together, behind the scenes and in the audience. While the project will be consumer run, the organizing will also involve professionals who will share their skills, and sponsors who will contribute their resources. The event itself will provide a setting, much like Movie Monday, where people regardless of their life experience sit together, laugh together, cry together and exchange ideas as an audience.

Public education. The festival creates several opportunities to educate people about mental illnesses:

• The first step is awareness raising of the issues, which is accomplished through the promotion of the festival's concept in the media.
• People who participate in the festival organizing and who attend the events are educated as they interact with consumers of mental health services.
• The films that are selected provide facts and uncover myths surrounding mental illnesses while entertaining.
• The festival provides venues for discussion, presentations, consumer-produced art and entertainment and other educational material.
• Through films, the festival also provides a vehicle, or vocabulary, to express a person's emotions and experiences with mental illnesses.

Professional Education. Our hope is that mental health professionals will participate not just as experts but to learn with the rest of the audience. Films have not only mythologized people with mental illnesses, but also the realm of treatment and the role of health professionals. From film examples and from panels including people who have experienced the illnesses and their ramifications we hope to explore perspectives that will challenge "expert" thinking and current treatment assumptions.

Entertainment. While conventional workshops and forums are useful in educating people who will attend workshops and forums, a film festival will be educational to people who like to go to movies. As with Movie Monday's regular ongoing programming, the festival's educational goals will be effective because the film medium is entertaining and will attract the general public.

Movie Monday
Bruce Saunders' unique approach to mental health outreach started five years ago and he hasn't missed an event since. After close to 300 shows, Bruce has proven that consumers of mental health services can effectively promote healthier attitudes about mental illnesses - because of their own experiences. He does this not only by bringing the public into the hospital, but also by being there welcoming the audience every week and being open about his own experience of manic depressive illness. This high visibility and high quality programming has earned Bruce the respect of many in Victoria and beyond. This festival will build on this success.

Rendezvous With Madness
This November, the sixth annual Rendezvous with madness Film Festival will open in Toronto. This highly popular event of the Workman Theatre Project brings out the movie going public as well as independent filmmakers, consumers and mental health professionals who take part in the presentations. Often the film's creators attend to explain their vision and sometimes even the actual people being portrayed in the movies participate in the intriguing post-film panel discussions. Rendezvous is now broadly funded by mental health agencies as well as by corporate sponsors such as Alliance Releasing, Zeneca Pharma, and arts funders such as Canada Council and Toronto Arts Council. In fact, last year Rendezvous turned a modest profit. Rendezvous organizer Lisa Brown has been collaborating with Bruce Saunders for several years and is currently providing her expertise in the planning of Victoria's festival. We are attending Toronto's festival in November 1998, to further develop this relationship.

Movies and Mental Illnesses
This Reel Madness Film Festival is focusing on the film-with-discussion formula that has been sprinkled into Movie Monday's regular programming for years.

People's perception of mental illnesses is greatly formed through films. Consider the stereotypes and stigmatization that millions of people encounter in classic films about madness such as The Shining, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Exorcist , Psycho, and Dressed to Kill. Compare these films to more insightful and constructive portrayals of mental illnesses in films such as Shine, Awakenings, The Madness of King George, Don Juan deMarcos, Ordinary People, Mr. Jones, What About Bob, Prince of Tides, and The Hanging Garden.

The power of these images on people's perceptions of mental illnesses has been as under-utilized as has the use of films to explore accurate depictions of mental illnesses. Saunders has proven that even the notorious movie One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, with negative portrayals of treatment and abuses in psychiatric facilities can be presented in a positive and constructive way when done with the right resources. Recently, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People trainers have begun using Hollywood examples in their presentations ­ silver screen examples are such powerful teaching devices.

The festival runs January 14 ­18, 1999. Work has already begun on the following major tasks:

• Securing funds and partnerships

• Event planning:
  • Community outreach and audience development
  • Create mailing list and media contact list
  • Create festival timeline, secure venues
  • Work in partnership with local theatre initiatives such as Cinevic's Victoria Independent Film Festival and Uvic's Cinecenta
  • Liaise with and attend Rendezvous with Madness festival

• Promotions:
  • Create press kits
  • Create advertisements and poster
  • Create programme guide
  • Create PSAs
  • Organize press screenings

• Event programming:
  • Film reviewing and selection
  • Contacting directors and distributors
  • Scheduling
  • Organize speakers
  • Technical issues and logistics
  • Kiosk planning

• Volunteer coordination

• Coordinating the Festival

• Closing
  • Return videos/films
  • Edit and package the video of the festival
  • Publish noteworthy transcripts of panel discussions and presentations
  • Acknowledgements and thanks
  • Summary report*

Movie Monday has always been a free "donations if you can" event both to comply with our Public Performance licenses and to ensure access to those with the need and the illnesses. Especially for this event, an exploration of mental illness and recovery, we wish to include those with the greatest at stake. A suggested donation level will be set to encourage those able to contribute, but we do not wish to exclude those who can't, nor to make them uncomfortable. Therefore, most of our budget must be secured from donations and funding before the event, not depending on "ticket sales". (Except for a possible Cinecenta evening which requires regular admission rates).