This article presents the findings of an Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) project, Objects of the Mind: engaging publics in the material cultures of media and mental health (AH/W002140/1), which was co-investigated by academics at the University of East Anglia and the University of Manchester and curators from across the Science Museum Group (SMG). Through this co-investigation we sought to tap into public interest in the SMG object collections and the accessibility of popular films (supplied by partners StudioCanal) to engage new audiences for our research on the interactions of psychiatry and cinema. From the museum perspective, we sought to use this research to ask new questions and tell new stories about the SMG objects, and to foster cross-collection dialogue between medicine (Science Museum) and media (National Science and Media Museum) collections. We discuss a range of events, activities and outputs we delivered towards these aims, but focus particularly on three new films we produced that (re)combined museum objects, feature film clips and expert interviews to tell new, enhanced or entangled stories about and across the collections. We will use these three short films to demonstrate three dialogues the project fostered: between museum collections; between histories; and between academic disciplines.