The Library resumes its nationally renowned public programming online with a streamed Indie Lens Pop-Up screening and discussion of the 2019 documentary Bedlam, which takes an intimate look at America’s mental health crisis. Producer Peter Miller joins experts from the National Alliance on Mental Illness in the virtual chat.

Miller teamed on Bedlam with director and fellow producer and writer Kenneth Rosenberg, a practicing psychiatrist haunted by the death of a mentally ill sister. The 86-minute film, set in Los Angeles, examines the woefully inadequate care of those with chronic and severe psychiatric conditions, going inside an overwhelmed psychiatric emergency room, a nearby jail warehousing thousands of psychiatric patients, and the homes and homeless encampments of people suffering from serious mental illness.

A system once built around long-term asylum care has essentially become a crude horror show for those who are detained, medicated, and tossed onto the streets with no means of recovery.

The streamed event, continuing the Indie Lens Pop-Up community cinema initiative, is co-presented by the California Film Institute, Georgia Public Broadcasting, Panhandle PBS, and Pickford Film Center with support from ITVS, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and PBS.