Betsy Usher Wins Art With Impact's Short Film Competition on Mental Health

San Francisco, California, June 2, 2016 (Newswire.com) - San Francisco-based non-profit Art With Impact (AWI) has announced Betsy Usher's film "I Am Borderline" as the winner of their monthly mental health-themed short film competition for May 2016.

I Am Borderline uses the experience of multiple characters to portray the realities and struggles of living with borderline personality disorder. Knowing that BPD is one of the most stigmatized and wildly misunderstood mental health disorders, Betsy wanted to make a film to help increase awareness, decrease stigma, and create empathy and understanding for the BPD community.

I am so pleased to have the opportunity to add this film to the OLIVE Film Collection: it's one of the best representations I've seen of the very real struggle that many folks go through living with a poorly understood, rarely represented disorder.

CARY MCQUEEN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, AWI

A  psychotherapist at Wright Institute Los Angeles, this is Betsy's directorial debut. Together with cinematographer Thom Kuo, Betsy created I Am Borderline on zero budget, recruiting the help of individuals who--like herself-- want to effect positive change in the mental health community.

Art With Impact’s monthly film competition awards one winning filmmaker a $1,000 cash prize for a film — up to five minutes in length and of any genre —that uses mental health as the point of interest. Film topics may either be interpretive of mental health, or address it directly. Winning films are added to AWI’s diverse OLIVE film collection, which is used in educational outreach programs.

Source: http://www.artwithimpact.org/