Mental Filmness

I love that we have so many powerful female filmmakers this year, and the short film Well(ness) is by women and about women and their mental health. I also love that we’re ending the festival with a dramedy, which is not something audiences always connect with a film festival about mental health. But yes, you can be both funny and sad, irreverent and realistic, when it comes to the topic of mental health. Writer/director Mary Lou Sandler and her cast and crew, who all seem like they’re having the time of their lives, prove this in Well(ness).

Well(ness) fires off some good laughs–especially in the first act of the film, which parodies self-help culture, women’s retreats, and wise gurus. It’s hard to keep a satirical comedy from becoming either too broad or too insular, but the film always manages to stay grounded in a very real and relevant message about the commodification of quick-fix mental health cures. The heart of the film is when the women “get real” and cut through the facade of the healing circle format to confess some of their most deep-seated fears and worries. The chemistry among the actresses is electric, and it feels so true to those moments when someone becomes open and vulnerable, giving others the permission and the freedom to do the same.

Mary Lou Sandler and the Well(ness) team have crafted a crowd-pleasing comedy about the “culture of curated calm.” Most thrilling of all, we are hosting them as our very special guests closing out the festival on Saturday night, October 10th, World Mental Health Day! Joining us for a post-film discussion will be Mary Lou Sandler, writer, director, producer, and actor and Justin Sandler, producer, editor, and first assistant director. The Sandlers are married and are business partners at 3 cubed studios, LLC.  

Don’t miss our grand finale with Well(ness) on 10/10, World Mental Health Day!

There is a fantastic comprehensive website for Well(ness) at https://www.3cubedstudios.com/wellnesshortfilm

Get your free tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.com/o/mental-filmness-54312030423

Mental Filmness loves handmade experimental films–and it doesn’t get much weirder or more DIY than Hi! We are Lisé: Sylvia & Sam. Here is a film that seems personal and intimate to the point where I feel like I’m witnessing someone’s private vision or fantasy that will never fully make sense to an outsider. To me, it felt fun and liberating, like accidentally catching your neighbor dancing and singing without abandon through the window. The actress Samantha Hernandez, who plays Sam, is delightful to watch because she seems so committed to her performance.

Chicago filmmaker Lisé Creed states the film is about a woman with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) who gets in touch with a long lost part of herself that she thought trauma had destroyed. The way she achieves this is through dance and body movement, which can access deep feeling and trauma we can’t always voice.

Lisé says “Dissociative episodes are often a matter of slipping away for a moment and not knowing how I got where I wound up. Trauma causes the mind to shield the self from truths that are too painful to deal with.
After years of trauma therapy, the walls between my parts are crumbling, and my hidden parts are starting to feel safe enough to reemerge and become open sides of myself.”

I think for a short film, Hi! We are Lisé: Sylvia & Sam will be rich in conversation, as we do not receive many films about DID, which is a widely misunderstood mental health diagnosis. Good news: Filmmaker Lisé Creed will be able to join us in conversation on Friday evening, 10/9!

Come see the one-of-a-kind Hi! We are Lisé: Sylvia & Sam at Mental Filmness on Friday evening, 10/9, with director Lisé Creed on our panel of talented Chicago filmmakers! You wouldn’t want to miss it.

Get your free tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/mental-filmness-film-festival-tickets-2000057532921

Beautiful and Tortured nails a particular lo-fi DIY aesthetic that taps into teenage girlhood, self-harm, and the romanticization of depression and suicide in literature and the media. This short documentary is an authentic self-portrait of someone who attempted suicide and her introspective awareness of guilt and shame for causing loved ones so much hurt. It makes use of diary entries, personal interviews, and hand-drawn animation to lend it an indie handcrafted touch.

In addition to being creative, Georganne Marie Valera, the 20-year-old brainchild behind the film, is exceptionally brave. In the act of making this film, connecting with peers and family, and taking accountability for her actions, Georganne displays wisdom well beyond her years.

The best thing is, the young and talented Georganne Marie Valera will be our very special guest Saturday night at Mental Filmness on 10/10, World Mental Health Day! Come see it and ask her questions about her film.

Get your free tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.com/o/mental-filmness-54312030423

You See I has a grounded sci-fi plot device (literally) that is simple and low-tech, yet still creates a distinct mood within its six-minute runtime. The plot device is an experimental technology that links the minds of participants in a therapy group for addiction recovery. The device is basically just a headband, but it’s pretty easy to buy into the film’s alternate reality. In a mere six minutes, the filmmaking team at work here (Director James (Jimbo Moon) Kahre, writer Jeffrey Wells, and editor Timothy Ryan Driscoll) creates a tone that is solemn and thoughtful, and ends the story on a note of unease. 

I’ve heard some people say that in a support group, more than any religious entity, they find the other people in the group serve as their higher power. As difficult as it is for someone to struggle alone, finding others who understand and support you helps hold you accountable. One thing I really appreciated about You See I is that it shows how in a support group, to a certain extent the different members work on themselves in order to help everybody else. 

We are so excited to host James (Jimbo Moon) Kahre, director of You See I, after playing the film on 10/10, World Mental Health Day!

Get your free tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.com/o/mental-filmness-54312030423

Finding Our Voices is a hopeful and uplifting, yet still substantial and very important work about surviving sexual abuse. There is barely any graphic content or detail about past trauma, as this documentary’s  focus is more about channeling those emotions through art and healing through creating support among survivors and an atmosphere where they are believed. Finding Our Voices explains some of the connections between art and processing trauma in a relatable and understandable way, showing how art can be a cathartic outlet for expressing repressed memories and emotions. 

Directors Maggie Hartmans and Brittany Hart have made a film about vulnerable women who, even when they opened up about their mental health, still found that they couln’t open up about their experiences with sexual abuse. Considering the heavy and stigmatized subject matter of Finding Our Voices, you’d expect the film to be disturbing, but I found it quite the opposite. It was one of those mental health movies that for me showed the power of resilience, and that recovery is often possible through the help of support groups and art therapy for individuals who have gone through even the most unimaginable horrors that they feel they can’t voice to anyone else. 

Finding Our Voices plays on World Mental Health Day, 10/10, at Mental Filmness!

Get your free tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.com/o/mental-filmness-54312030423

You’re Not a Fool, Grandpa is a beautiful sensory piece of animation from France that skillfully conveys the love of family members overcoming the barrier of mental illness in a realistic, empathetic, and gentle way. It packs a big emotional punch and a lot of depth and complexity into a sparse poetic narration in four minutes. Arranged in a nostalgic collage style, the film uses scrapbook elements like photographs, cut paper, and glitter to convey a granddaughter’s memories about her grandfather’s mental illness. Director Adrien Lhoste states that colors in the film were chosen “to evoke instant emotional reactions, drawing on symbolic archetypes (for example, red glitter to express anger, or a pink background to suggest calm). Likewise, Clément Walker-Viry’s music uses deep, immersive harmonies at the beginning of the film, which gradually evolve into lighter, more ethereal sounds, guiding the viewer’s emotions from sadness toward compassion.”

In short, a lot of thought was put into a four-minute film about a family coping with a relative’s mental illness, and continuing to rebuild and put the torn pieces of the photograph back together. The result is a highly artistic, and highly emotional, animated film that feels visceral and almost tactile, like bringing a diary to life.       

You can see I’m Not A Fool, Grandpa, at Mental Filmness on the evening of 10/10, World Mental Health Day.

Get your free tickets here: ttps://www.eventbrite.com/e/mental-filmness-film-festival-tickets-2000057532921

Sleep All Day is a deceptively simple short film, but the muted and grainy color palette and eerie score add layers of depth and complexity. Set mostly in one dim bedroom, the film deals with the subject of mother-daughter relations becoming strained by depression. I feel like many viewers can relate to the adolescent daughter in this film, who feels so weighted down by sadness that she struggles to get out of bed. I found myself thinking about this story from the mother’s perspective as well, and about how parents must wrestle with the push and pull of whether to comfort their child or prod them to get up, and with what is best for their well-being. There is something haunting and resonant about knowing either decision must be painful to make.

The writer and director Bixuan Zhang specializes at exploring complex and nuanced emotions within mother-daughter relationships, and that is exactly what she has done successfully here. It’s rare to see a film about a mother and daughter coping with and talking about depression in a way as realistic as this film, where they don’t even want to talk about depression at all. Instead, it becomes about the line between maternal love and mental illness, and the constantly blurring line between them.

You can see Sleep All Day at Mental Filmness on 10/10, World Mental Health Day!

Get your free tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/mental-filmness-film-festival-tickets-2000057532921

Our headliner film for 10/9 is Maybe It’s This. What a wonderful documentary about pole dancing that we never expected to tie in with mental health so well. The connection to mental health is more subtle than in other entries, but it’s there in the mindfulness and freedom from self and societal limitation the art of pole dancing can provide. This film de-stigmatizes pole dancing as much as it de-stigmatizes mental health, showing it is about body positivity, body autonomy, and being comfortable in one’s own skin. The camaraderie among women of all shapes and sizes feeling powerful and sexy while supporting other women without judgement is such a healing thing to see.

The dancers featured in the film concede that it’s impossible to separate pole dancing from its roots in strip clubs. What they find so empowering about pole dancing is it’s not so much about what your body looks like, but what your body can do. It’s a flexible form of movement that allows you to come up with your own routine, providing a lot of leeway for creativity and self-expression. Sometimes our body can work out healing from grief when our mind cannot.

We’ve featured a lot of films in Mental Filmness about the mind-body connection and how therapeutic movement can be for mental health. We’ve also featured films that speak to the power of the creative arts to tap into a deep area of the brain that processes trauma. Pole dancing effectively harnesses both, so it’s no wonder that it has such a strong tie-in to mental health, even if it doesn’t seem immediately obvious.

Tori Beach, the filmmaker behind Maybe It’s This, will be a special filmmaker guest at the festival on Friday night, 10/9! In addition to seeing a well-made documentary that offers a truly unique take on mental health, you can participate in a conversation with the filmmaker about a fascinating topic and film.

Maybe It’s This will be our final film playing Friday night, 10/9, with Tori Beach in person. 

Get your free tickets here:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/mental-filmness-film-festival-tickets-2000057532921

I used to think of the “public service announcement” label as an insult of sorts. A PSA was a message funded by the government that was usually both trite and clearly sponsored by a corporate interest to push their agenda. It was actually Mental Filmness that convinced me there is an art to the PSA.

 As you can imagine, mental health foundations and organizations from across the globe use government funding to sponsor a wide variety of creative short filmed pieces to convey their message. Not only that, but there is so much government funding available these days for artistic advertisements made by non-profit and educational groups that it ensures orgranizations can hire professional filmmakers to achieve a result that is both informative and aesthetically pleasing.

This is a long preface for a short film, Save Yourself by Lawrence Q Hu. Clocking in at a minute and fifteen seconds, Save Yourself was Hu’s attempt to make the PSA about suicide that he wanted to see. Shot on 35-millimeter film with gorgeous cinematography, Save Yourself aims to leave behind the generic platitudes of many anti-suicide PSAs in favor of a more introspective and personal inner journey of struggle with mental health. Contemplative images such as storefronts, train stations, and playgrounds present themselves as daily scenery wide open to possibilities, while a well-delivered voiceover narration suggests hope.

I saved the best part for last. If you’re a Chicago resident and the scenery in the PSA strikes you as somewhat familiar, it is probably because Lawrence Q Hu is based out of Chicago. And yes, he will be in attendance at Mental Filmness on 10/9 to present and speak about his PSA Save Yourself. You won’t want to miss it!                     

You can see Save Yourself  plays Friday evening, 10/9, at Mental Filmness, with filmmaker Lawrence Q Hu in person!

Get your free tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.com/o/mental-filmness-54312030423