Dale John Allen Wins Art With Impact's Short Film Competition on Mental Health

San Francisco, California, May 6, 2016 (Newswire.com) - San Francisco-based non-profit Art With Impact (AWI) has announced Dale John Allen's film "A Film About Love" as the winner of their monthly mental health-themed short film competition for May 2016.

In the autobiographical A Film About Love, Dale focuses on the struggle of living with bipolar disorder, and how stability comes at its own price. The 5 minute film depicts "a story of friendship, adventure, love and loss, all entwined to create my own personal story of coming to terms with a diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder."  Dale aims to challenge his viewers’ outlook on topics generally misrepresented or misunderstood within mainstream film and media.

Mental health is very rarely represented clearly, and as it's such a wide subject matter, my piece only scratches the surface.

DALE JOHN ALLEN, ART WITH IMPACT SHORT FILM COMPETITION WINNER

Explains Dale: "...after much thought I decided to stop looking towards to media and society to correctly represent me and to take the opportunity to write a piece to represent myself."

A  22-year-old student at the University of Brighton, UK, Dale is currently studying Moving Image. Through visual art and film, he aims to explore themes surrounding social politics of representation, highlighting the struggles individuals within the LGBTQ community face as well as those suffering from mental illness. Dale is currently in the process of writing his debut feature film on subject of mental illness and sexuality.

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/