Hello all!
I promise this is what I intend to be the final post about the festival finale, and I will stop spamming your feed/inbox if you follow Mental Filmness in any subscription-type capacity.
Tomorrow I will announce voting results, so get all your votes in for the virtual festival and check back for that. Tomorrow I will probably say this again and elaborate on it a bit more, but this is the last year I intend to host a *virtual* festival. It was born out of necessity during the pandemic, and it has always been a bit of a logistical challenge to balance it with physical events once we started bringing those back. More than anything else I’ve just realized these kinds of films work much better with a conversation live in a room, and anything I’ve tried to replicate that in the virtual festival just hasn’t worked as well. What that means is hopefully more *live* screenings in the future.
Finally, I think we have touched upon all the films in the festival in some way except for one that I saved for last, which is Technical Fault. Technical Fault is a really incredible experimental short about a very important topic, the intersection between homelessness and mental health. Following the narration of an artist experiencing homelessness and borderline personality order, the film moves between animation and reality, between everyday life and memory in his work. The reflexive, poetic perspective opens up impressive insights into the realities of homeless and mentally ill people – and thus makes an important contribution to social understanding. It’s much better seen than described, so you should watch it in the next few hours here: Technical Fault | Shorts Block No. 1 | Mental Filmness 2025 Virtual Festival
The reason why I touched upon this topic is it dovetails with another *live* program in Chicago that will be happening November 22nd. We are once again partnering with the Disability Pride Committee of the Chicago Public Library to host a screening of Doug Shaffer’s 5000 Blankets, which is about the very relevant and timely topic of homelessness and mental health, during the season where it is most needed. See attached flyer below. Please attend if you can!
And enjoy the *final* final eve of the Mental Filmness virtual festival! Thank you for all your support!
