Film festivals are very important for many different reasons.

The main reason is that a lot of people who are very very creative don’t have a good financial backing and trying to pursue projects. Posting this film festival has been our great pride and joy because it has enabled some of our favorite artists to make a living and showcase there are. Being an artist and trying to make money doing so I can be very difficult so we are happy to provide our services!

We try to make this international because we do not like to pick favorites or limit our artist to our location. This also adds an entire new depth of competition because people now understand that they are going to be competing with some of the top artist in the world.

Creativity can take many different forms and shapes of art. We like to embrace every aspect of every piece of art because we understand that at all has a deep meaning to the artist. Most of the time you can tell when a piece of art is directly from the heart, and these are the pieces that stand out as well as gain a lot of traction in our international film Festival.

We call this an American international film Festival because most of the people do speak English and it is hosted in America. Other languages that are popular in our film festival are Russian, German, Spanish, Dutch, and Italian. A lot of times where the artist lives has a great impact on what they produce. Your environment has an amazing impact on how you see the world as well as how you react with it.

In a past life, before we were filming professionally we used to be electricians and run the company with some of our best friends. Our office was located in Buffalo NY and we learned a ton about business during this venture. All the skills that we picked up were related to film and we were able to have a smooth transition. To view our old business you can see it here (Electricians Buffalo) or check out the location below.

Being an artist means that you are not only more creative than the average individual but you also see the world differently.

What might look like a curve and a badge to one person may be a masterful piece of art to a trained. A lot of photographers can take very simple objects and turn them into beautiful creations. We are not only looking for creativity with tools and resources but also we are looking for an eye that is behind the creativity. One of her favorite sayings goes as follows, it’s not the camera but the eye behind it that really counts. When you step into our international film Festival your past does not matter, the person you are in the outside world does not mean anything. The only thing that is valued here is what you can create. This is a tremendous release for most artist to because they know they are not being judged.

Many times when you walk throughout the world you’ll notice that everyone is very stiff and rigid and has a very bland facial expression. Kind of atmosphere that we try to create here at the international film Festival is one of happiness and joy and something that is unique to what everyone else is used to. Most of the time when people come here they do not forget that experience and the memories that were made with the people last a lifetime.

All of my greatest friends that I have Matt have come from the international film Festival and most of them come back every single year. We get a lot of feedback on our website and our social media that peoples lives were changed due to attending this event. If you feel that you need to fly in that it is highly recommended that you do so. If you are tight on the budget then feel free to contact us and we will see if we can provide you any financing. When it comes to housing a lot of our members post individuals without question.

The environment is very friendly and money seems to not be a very large factor in what we do.

Adventure films are a top priority

If you happen to have an adventure film that you were working on or an action film then we have a whole separate category for you. Every year we have many applicants who create action/adventure films and every year we are more more impressed. This year we decided to create a whole separate sub category for this exact reason. Both the audience and the filmmakers enjoy this category so much that it’s not rare to see a crowd in front of the screens. One of her biggest idols is the famous stuntman Jackie Chan, Jackie Chan was featured in many different movies both in Hong Kong and America. He’s very widely known and a lot of people aspire to once be at his level. There’s no way that you can be in the stand community and not know Jackie Chan. After we do the showings we will have a Q and a section with the master himself. This is often times the most crowded and most excited portion of our festival. A lot of people come and ask him all sorts of questions that will indeed be posted online to our website and on all of our social media platform. We highly encourage that you bring your friends and family to this once-in-a-lifetime event and will make sure that it is unforgettable.

Older Years

A lot of the competitors will come from a background of working in the service industry. Understanding hard labor gives a good work ethic and appreciation for what goes into building a film. A good example would be this Buffalo dumpster rental company that applied last year. Their time is close knight and are damn good at what they do. Check them out here: https://goo.gl/maps/zEpPphXsL5WRhxVw6

Mad in America does not have a Film Festival scheduled for 2015. Please sign up for our newsletter to stay tuned about future events!

October 16-18, 2015 — Gothenburg, Sweden
Family Care Foundation, in collaboration with Mad in America, invites you to attend the ‘Driving Us Crazy’ Film Festival, which will feature three days of challenging and awareness-raising films, lectures, personal experiences, research, theatre and music. Find more information at the Festival website, including schedule, tickets, accommodations, and more.

Stories and News

Reflections on MIA’s Film Festival and Our Collective Human Future
Three weeks have passed since Mad in America’s International Film Festival took place at the Regent Theatre in Arlington, Massachusetts, USA. I’ve been spending a lot of time in solitude, reflecting and processing the whole thing, for in the Festival’s wake, I was taken over by a powerful, albeit interesting mix of great physical and mental fatigue…

Laura Delano, Festival Organizer, speaks about Mad in America’s International Film Festival

“The answer is that there is no (one) answer”: An Interview with Sera Davidow of Beyond the Medical Model
The answer is that there is no (one) answer. That’s kind of the point of the whole thing. The answer is that we do far more harm by deciding what the answer is and forcing it on someone else than we do by not claiming to have any answer at all. The answer is that the answer is different for each person in some way. And so, yes, the answers are coming in that, each day, there are people who are making discoveries about themselves that are a part of changing their lives. The answers will always be coming as long as there are people who are supported to have the space to seek them out.

GUEST BLOG: Auður Axelsdóttir of Hallgrímur-a man like me
In Iceland, the film has been used as tool in our educational program for ninth and tenth grade, in high schools and the university in Reykjavík and Boston University and University of Mannheim in Germany. It is helping to fight stigma and prejudice, and offers young people an alternative understanding of emotional distress, and a perspective on the importance of taking care of your mental health. We’ve seen it open their eyes to the importance of taking care of others arround them and to show other people respect in every aspect of life.

GUEST BLOG: Jonathan Balazs of Mars Project
I began to recognize the importance of language in discourse on the subject, having never made the connection between oppressive terminology vs. lived experiences of Madness. I began to realize through my experiences with Khari [whose story Mars Project is based on], both off-camera and as director, that there were broader socioeconomic circumstances that underscored his story and were all too true for others sharing the same psych-labels.

Guest BLOG: Extreme Cleaning of Buffalo

I was mind boggled when i first saw the movie and what it had to offer. I was at work and showed it to my entire carpet cleaning crew because i was so fascinated. I walked into the office the next day and they had all showed it to their spouses.

During my past struggle within the traditional mental health system, processing a toxic psychotropic medication, and an alleged diagnosis of Bipolar disorder back in 1993, I never gave up hope that I would get to the root cause of my symptoms. What became apparent to me in 2010, as I officially detoxed lithium and addressed healing root causes of my symptoms, was that humanity is facing a serious crisis and global mental health epidemic.

“I Much Prefer the Idea of Humans Just Helping Humans”: An Interview with Daniel Mackler of Open Dialogue and Healing Homes
realized, over and over again, that I was seeing patterns in the mental health system—and the only people who were really hearing my message were my clients. And often they knew this message already, because they’d lived it. I wanted to reach more people—and not just “clients”—therapists too, and family members. So I made my first film in 2007, eight years into my therapy career, and then…well, let’s say I just started reaching a huger, wider group of people. And that was very satisfying. It motivated me in a whole new way. And it inspired a shift in my life that I never really expected. After all, I wasn’t a trained filmmaker—I was just someone who was moderately tech-savvy and had a strong message and a lot of drive. And so, without even planning it, a shift came in my life—and eventually making films that reached a lot of people became more tantalizing to me than being a therapist.

Fighting the “Somnolence and Passivity” of Psychiatric Drugs: An Interview with Professor Philip Singer of One of the Mad Ones. Dr. DeSole was intellectually influenced by cultural anthropology but also by the work of the Scottish psychiatrist R.D. Laing as well as the writings of Dr. Thomas Szasz, who wrote among many books The Myth of Mental Illness. (Dr. Szasz was a personal friend of mine. I made a documentary about his life and work, called The Last Interview of Dr. Thomas Szasz.) Dr. DeSole was acutely aware of the opposition to his work with patients by not only the other attending psychiatrists but also the relatives of the patients and owners of the halfway homes who preferred that their tenants be passive and somnolent instead of active and lively.

“I left the psychiatric ward and set out on a mission…”: An Interview with Ross McKenzie of Bipolarized
When I was twenty-one years of age, twenty-one years ago, I experienced what I now refer to as a spiritual awakening. I knew that there were numerous flaws and damage being done within our current Western medical model of mental health care. I left the psychiatric ward in May 1993 and set out on a mission traveling the world and seeking out all forms of integrated medicine and therapies to understand and get to the root cause of my symptoms. I feel blessed in that I accomplished my personal mission to abundant health.

“These are exciting times”: An Interview with Tom Cotton of There is a Fault in Reality
I’d been working on a documentary project film about R.D. Laing, whose work I’m very interested in. One of the things that Laing was notable for was challenging the totalizing mental health orthodoxies of his day, and trying to understand the experiences of people diagnosed with ‘schizophrenia’ from their perspective. It is profoundly puzzling to me that forty years later, this idea still seems radical in mainstream mental health. After a couple of years of developing the film and trying to find the right story angle, the penny finally dropped: it should be told from the perspective of people with the diagnosis. That would be the most fitting and powerful way of telling a story about the contradiction between the medical explanation of ‘schizophrenia’ and the way people with the diagnosis understand their experiences.

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