West 47th Street (film)

"West 47th Street" is a cinema verite documentary film by Bill Lichtenstein and June Peoples. The film was produced by the Cambridge, MA-based Lichtenstein Creative Media.

The production follows four people with mental illness, off the streets and out of homeless shelters, in and out of the hospital, at home and at work, over three years. At times hilarious and at other times tragic, West 47th Street provided an unprecedented window on the lives of people who are often feared and ignored, seldom understood.

West 47th Street was winner of "Best Documentary" at the 2002 Atlanta Film Festival, received the "Audience Award" at the DC Independent Film Festival, and sold out theatres across the U.S., and internationally from Vancouver to Dublin to South Korea. Newsweek called the documentary “must see” and the Washington Post termed it “remarkable."

West 47th Street was accompanied by a major 12-month educational outreach campaign, which involved over 100 screenings across the country. The film’s rigorous national outreach campaign included the distribution of $40,000 in mini-grants made available by LCM to local organizations to utilize screenings of the film to focus on issues of concern in their communities. These included screenings at Grand Rounds at Yale Medical School, on Native American reservations in New Mexico, and use of the film as a training tool for outreach staff at homelessness programs in California.

Lichtenstein Creative Media also produces the national weekly public radio program The Infinite Mind.

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