“No One Cares About Crazy People” will screen at the Wexner Center for the Arts Wednesday. Credit: Courtesy of Dave Devine
Art Possible Ohio, a Columbus-based arts organization, and the Wexner Center for the Arts will collaborate for the 12th-annual March ReelAbilities Film Festival Columbus program, featuring a screening of the documentary, “No One Cares About Crazy People.”
ReelAbilities is an independent nonprofit disability film festival that represents award-winning films by and about people with disabilities, according to its website.?
ReelAbilities is partnering with Art Possible, a statewide nonprofit founded in 1986 that advocates for artists with disabilities and promotes inclusive, accessible creative opportunities — according to its website — to present the film at the Wexner Center Wednesday at 7 p.m.
Inspired by the book of the same name by Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalist Ron Powers, “No One Cares About Crazy People” weaves together a family memoir and broader reporting on the nation’s mental health system, said Gail Freedman, writer, director and producer of the film.?
Freedman said Powers, who has two sons with schizophrenia, inspired her to create the documentary.
“I did want to humanize the face of mental illness, serious mental illness, because I think people react in fear and aversion, and tend to not want to pay attention because it’s kind of scary to them,” Freedman said. “I also wanted to not just leave us in a place of doom and gloom, but perhaps try to inject some hope and look at some options for how we could remake this profoundly broken system.”
Narrated by actor Bob Odenkirk, best known as Saul Goodman from the TV series’ “Breaking Bad” and “Better Call Saul,” Freedman said the film follows Powers’ family story while also documenting other families navigating severe mental illness in real time.
“It came to seem important to capture the diversity of mental illness and how it does not discriminate even if the system does,” Freedman said. “Everybody who lives with a serious mental illness is, in point of fact, a human being and somebody’s father, son, sister, brother, neighbor, child or friend.”
Freedman said the film showcases that the title isn’t always true.
“I think our film actually depicts in some ways quite the opposite that there are many people who do care,” Freedman said.
A panel discussion will follow the screening featuring Freedman and Darrell E. Herrmann, a retired U.S. Army officer and computer programmer who has lived with schizophrenia for more than 40 years. Danielle Smith, executive director of the National Association of Social Workers Ohio Chapter and an Ohio State lecturer in the College of Social Work, will moderate the discussion.
“I think because each state is different in how it handles things, each state is going to have its own dialogue with the film,” said Nikki Swift, director of ReelAbilities Film Festival Columbus. “We offer an ability to have difficult conversations and encounter things that are difficult to talk about, in as safe [a space as] can be provided.”
Freedman said the post-screening conversations are central to the film’s purpose.
“We really wanted to inject and leave people with a note of hope that, you know, things can change, things do change, but change is hard and it begins with understanding and awareness,” Freedman said.
With serious mental illnesses like schizophrenia and bipolar disorders often emerging in early adulthood, Freedman said it’s important to bring the film to a college campus setting.
“I think it’s really important that we have this conversation across the age span,” Freedman said. “Young people bring a kind of an immediacy to this.”
Having screened the film on multiple college campuses, Freedman said she hopes students leave with a deeper understanding of the crisis.
“I hope that the students who do come just walk away feeling like, ‘okay, now I get this in a way that I didn’t before,’” Freedman said. “If people leave and they feel like they have that appreciation and they want to learn and understand more, then I guess I’ve done my job.”
By bringing the documentary to Ohio State, Swift said she hopes students will not only engage with the stories on screen, but also reflect on how mental health touches their own communities.
“I think [the film] gives students a better way to encounter the world that we often don’t understand,” Swift said.
During the creative process, Freedman said she realized how wide an audience the film could resonate with.?
“One of the things I came to realize during the time I was making this is that everybody has some connections to this,” Freedman said. “If it’s not yourself or a family member, it’s your neighbor, it’s your coworker, it’s your fellow student, it’s your friend. We all know somebody, and probably somebodies.”?
Tickets to the screening are free and can be found on the Wex’s website.
