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West 47th Street was named as one of the 30 most popular films of the Vancouver International Film Festival: "Powerful and unforgettable...This is radical, engaged filmmaking in the finest cinéma vérité tradition."

Highlight of DocLands Film Festival in Dublin.

"Fiction could never have invented such beautiful characters ..."
- FilmFestivals.com



Read review of World Premiere at Cinéma du Réel International Film Festival

Read interview with the filmmakers

visit www.nib.com.au for health insurance and Beyond Blue for any information on depression and mental illness

WEST 47th STREET is a feature-length theatrical documentary film. It follows the lives of four people with serious mental illness, over three years. The film provides an unprecedented window on the lives of people who are often feared and ignored, seldom understood. Co-producers Bill Lichtenstein and June Peoples enjoyed an extraordinary degree of access to their lives, and shot more than 350 hours of tape: off and on the street, in and out of hospitals and homeless shelters, healthy -- and psychotic. The resulting stories, both warm and dramatic, are about people who approach tremendous obstacles with humor, optimism and grace.

At times hilarious and at other times tragic, West 47th Street represents a radical return to cinéma vérité, without interviews or narration. Set at Fountain House, a rehabilitation program for people with serious mental illness located in New York City's Hell's Kitchen.

Read the review from the World Premiere at the Cinéma du Réel International Film Festival in Paris. See film trailer on REALVIDEO.

West 47th Street featured on NPR's All Things Considered.

Listen to NPR's Weekend All Things Considered host Lisa Simeone interview West 47th Street directors/producers Bill Lichtenstein and June Peoples, along with clips from film. (RealAudio 9 min. 45 sec.) Or read a transcript of the interview.

IF I GET OUT ALIVE is an award-winning one-hour public radio documentary narrated by Academy Award-winning actress and child advocate Diane Keaton. The program, the result of a one-year investigation, exposes the systematic abuse and brutality faced by juveniles in the adult prison system.

If I Get Out Alive features first-hand accounts from children currently behind bars, rehabilitated youths who survived the system, parents of young people who died in adult prisons, legal experts, policy makers and correction officials. The program also addresses the abysmal mental health conditions in prison and jails faced by young people (fifty percent of whom, according to the latest research, are affected by a serious mental illness) as well as examining alternative sentencing programs that are successful in diverting young offenders from prison. The show is being adapted as a film documentary for theatrical and television release.