The festival
The MENTAL POWER PRAGUE FILM FESTIVAL is an international film festival of (non-)actors with a mental or combined handicap organized by HENDAVER, o.s. The festival shows feature films in which exclusively people with a mental and combined handicap act.
The main idea of the festival is to create the conditions for artistic self-fulfillment of handicapped people and thus to take part in their mental development. In addition to that, this activity opens a brand new possibility of social integration of the handicapped. The festival came into existence in order to help these people get out of their everyday routines and enable them to experience moments of fame and artistic activity. It is a unique project which hadn‘t taken place in the Czech republic or abroad before. There are other festivals which monitor everyday life of handicapped people – theatre, musical or documentary film festivals. However, a festival of feature films hadn‘t existed before, although feature film is exactly the genre in which handicapped people can ACTIVELY fulfill their artistic talent and perception. Feature film is a space in which music, dance and theatre come together, being the artistic aspects which are the most natural and often the only way of communication.
Any private person or corporation can enroll a feature film for the Mental Power Prague Film Festival. The goal of the organizers is to present as many films with handicapped people as possible at the festival.