The inaugural RestFest Film Festival is this week!
Beginning this Thursday, RestFest Film Festival brings you Film & Video Art Programs and virtual events! All created/led by Disabled, chronically ill, Neurodivergent, mentally ill, and/or mad artists.
Dear RestFest friends,
At the time of writing this, the Virtual Theater’s countdown says the festival begins in 2 days, 4 hours, 41 min, and 55s. So it feels like a good time for a recap of what’s to come & a little introduction! The 2024 Poster is available below & in PDF form!1
Introduction from Bec
This is Bec, RestFest’s founder & festival director. Folks have been asking me why I chose to create RestFest, and I have trouble really putting that into words. RestFest is something I had been looking for as a Disabled, sick, neurodivergent, and mad artist-filmmaker myself. A place where we can come together to share our art, create art together, and simply bask in the comfort of a togetherness with others who speak the same language, living & making in Crip Time together. All created by us and for us.
In this process of organizing RestFest, I’ve come to learn that this coming together around film, art, and disability, from our homes which are many thousands of miles apart, is even more valuable than I could have imagined. Getting to know community members through events like our Film Club (co-hosted with
) and the festival prep process with filmmakers has been magical. I can’t wait for what’s to come this week at the festival.Thank you so much for being here and for honoring me with the gift of being in community with you.
The Festival
From August 15 - 22nd, you will be able to stream our Film & Video Art Programs VOD & attend our virtual Festival Events!
I am very, very excited that all films and events will have audio descriptions and captioning! Learn about more access measures in place on our site.
A bit about the film programs
Films are curated into shorts blocks based on the energies, elements, and sensations they emit or evoke. This means each shorts block presents a variety of subject matters and styles. Such as the Shorts Block: Thirst / Hunger which presents a poetic film that brings you on the journey of a young artist becoming sick with ME/CFS (Life In The Shadowlands), an animated dark comedy about finding acceptance in a life with a chronic illness personified as an unpleasant flatmate (Living With It), a colorful and haunting electroacoustic toy opera that reckons with the impacts of structural objectification of women (Be a Doll), and an experimental music video about living within the medical industrial complex (“Waiting” by REKLAMA).
Click here to visit the Virtual Theater where you will soon be able to stream the films, and pre-order your tickets in the meantime.
Passes are also available here to stream all of the programs at a single, reduced cost.
Our festival trailer is here!
I am very excited to share our festival trailer with you! Embedded below is a version with and a version without audio descriptions. Both have closed captioning and a written video description in the caption. Thank you to access artist & RestFest filmmaker alexa dexa for graciously providing audio/video describing!
Events Events Events!
From August 15 - 22nd, we will be hosting 11 virtual events! All events are led by filmmakers in the RestFest 2024 program.
Like the films, our events have lots of variation and are all accessible from bed.
To list a couple:
This Friday, we will come together to create a digital dream landscape for rest, community, and thriving using stop-motion animation! At Holly Summerson’s GIF Gathering: an Animation Workshop.
On Sunday, we are hosting a virtual Slumber Party (aka a social mixer)! Very much in the spirit of RestFest, we will gather over zoom in our most restful spaces & most comfy clothes to be in community with one another.
There are lots more, so click here to learn about all 11 events & reserve your tickets!
As my spoons run out, I would like to once again say how grateful I am that you are here. I cannot wait for you to experience these gorgeous films & I hope to see you at events!
Sending warmth and ease,
Bec xx
restfestfilmfestival.org // Instagram
Poster Image Description: Black text on a white background says ‘watch films, attend events, find community, entirely from bed. August 15th - 22nd, 2024. RestFest Film Festival, created by/for Disabled, Deaf, chronically ill, neurodivergent, mentally ill, and or mad community.’ Between the lines of text is a black and white collage of images from films in the 2024 RestFest Film Festival Program including (left to right in rows): a person laying in bed, a person raising his arm toward a stop sign, two people leaning into one another, someone in a tyvek suit, a person laying on their stomach, the Szechenyi Baths, a young person looking into the distance, an arm held by a nurse’s hand, a drawing of a person with sweat dripping down, a hand holding up a circuit board, a person in a swimsuit and swim cap screaming, a CGI-created person with a straight face, a person’s face on a cell phone screen, three individual’s faces looking forward, a person shaving their head with a full-body image of a person behind them. At the bottom of the poster is a QR code and the tag @restfestfilmfestival and the url restfestfilmfestival.org.