West 47th Street - United States

"West 47th Street" is an intimate cinéma vérité portrait focusing on the lives of people who are often feared, ignored, and misunderstood. It follows 4 people with serious mental illness as their lives naturally unfold over a 3-year period. Viewers see them on and off the streets, in and out of the hospital, on and off medication, at home and at work. While letting the viewer see their struggles with the confusion, joblessness, alcoholism, and drug addiction that often characterise the lives of the mentally ill, the film also highlights the faith and courage with which these people fight to regain control of their lives. The characters are all members of Fountain House, a psychiatric rehabilitation programme located in a part of New York City once known as Hell's Kitchen (on West 47th Street). They include:

• Frances Olivero: Struggling with gender identity and an abusive past, Frances becomes a leading advocate for people with mental illness, and is credited with helping pass important state legislation. Along the way, he is diagnosed with cancer...
• Fitzroy Frederick: A homeless Rastafarian man with schizophrenia who makes remarkable changes in his life that are threatened by his choices about anti-psychotic medication and street drugs.
• Zeinab Wali: A talented cook whose husband took their children away to Egypt and left her to live on a doorstep when she was diagnosed with schizophrenia.
• Tex Gordon: Committed to a mental hospital by his stepmother when his father died, Tex spent 19 years in state psychiatric institutions. For 20 years after his release, he lived under a court order obtained by his stepmother certifying him as incompetent. Viewers are with Tex as the order is lifted, and as he takes the first vacation of his life...

Filmmakers Bill Lichtenstein and June Peoples initially spent 3 months at Fountain House in 1996 gaining the trust of both staff and "members" before they started shooting 350 hours of videotape. Their strategy was to give voice to people living with mental illness, allowing subjects to speak for themselves without commentary, thereby hopefully challenging viewers to look behind the disease to see the individual. "There's a quality to people with severe mental illness that's loud and obnoxious", says Lichtenstein. "We held it up to see. We wanted people to look into the sun...We wanted to show that no matter how sick somebody is there's a person in there."

The national TV broadcast of "West 47th Street" premiered on August 19 2003 at 10:00 pm on national public television - PBS, or Public Broadcasting Service. It appeared on P.O.V. (a cinema term for 'point of view'), PBS's annual showcase for independent non-fiction films. LCM and P.O.V. then coordinated and co-funded a national campaign involving mental health groups, grassroots advocacy and educational groups, and local public television stations. One of the centrepieces of this campaign was a website dedicated to "West 47th Street". This interactive website features a "share your stories" section, the introduction to which reads: "Mental illness touches millions of lives, but each story is different. Share your own or read other viewers' accounts with our searchable collection of stories." In the section entitled "Talking Back Video Letters", viewers share their responses to the film and speak out on overcoming stigma and the importance of mental health services. People may ask questions of the filmmakers. Additional resources on mental illness are also detailed.

The film is meant to serve as a springboard for discussions about accommodation, acceptance, allocation of resources, and how our view of people with mental illness shapes their quality of life. To that end, a 24-page discussion guide [PDF] was produced to help those seeking to facilitate community-based interaction about the film. It features key issues, background information, and resources, as well as advice about planning an event, facilitating a discussion, asking and responding to questions, taking action, and conducting a community assessment. One key point noted in the guide: "It is strongly recommended that every event about people with mental illness also include people with mental illness as planners, participants, and experts."

The film and campaign have reached beyond the United States. "West 47th Street" has been screened in theatres internationally, from Vancouver to Dublin to South Korea. The World Health Organization showed the film in Kosovo.

Mental Health.

After mental illness impeded his career in network news, LCM founder and president Bill Lichtenstein created his own media company to focus on issues of social justice, human rights, and mental health.

"West 47th Street" was named "Best Documentary" at 2002 Atlanta Film Festival and earned the "Audience Award" at DC Independent Film Festival.

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