Festivals

Reel Madness Film Festivals

These were five day series of films and discussions about mental illness and related topics. The events were scheduled in Januarys for five consecutive years. Besides the events themselves, the festival format made an event that generated much media on the topics and awareness ofMovie Monday’s ongoing programming generally. See “Media featuring events” for that media coverage each January of those years 1999 through 2003. Here are the posters and programs generated for each series. Each poster featured the art of someone living with mental illness.

The RM2000 review gives an idea how well that fest was received and my enthusiasm about the results. I found that the focus on organizing the fests buoyed me up through theChristmas season which usually is a hard time for me.

After the 2003 fest Bruce Wallace and I decided that, although the “festival”concept got a lot of media attention, mixing films on these topics into the regular weekly MM programming would be more effective. It began to feel like we exhausted the audience (and ourselves) clustering too many of the same type of films together. A few weeks between these heavier offerings gave time for us all to recover and focus on the guests and topics.

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

Homelessness Film Series

First Nations Film Festival