Afterlife

Afterlife, Ishu Patel, National Film Board of Canada

This animated short film attempts to answer the eternal questions, What is dying? and How does it feel? Based on recent studies, case histories and some of the ancient myths, the afterlife state is portrayed as an awesome but methodical working-out of all the individual's past experiences. Film without words.

Soul Survivor - The James Brown Story

This documentary explores the life and work of soul singer James Brown.

The Great War (BBC 1964) Part 1 of 26 - On The Idle Hill Of Summer

This documentary shows the full insane carnage that was the First World War. Made at a time (1964) when many veterans were still alive to tell their stories, this series strips away the mythology that has come to dominate much of the contemporary discourse around the war. Pointless battles, failed strategies and massive slaughter were the consistent factors in this truly horrific episode in human history. We owe it to the poor unfortunates that were swept up by this unimaginable conflict to remember their sacrifice and to ensure that nothing like this ever happens again, even thought the present day conflict in Syria resembles conditions on the Western Front in many ways. 

The Battle Of Algiers

The Battle of Algiers (Italian: La battaglia di Algeri; Arabic: معركة الجزائر, romanized: Maʿrakat al-Jazāʾir) is a 1966 Italian-Algerian war film co-written and directed by Gillo Pontecorvo. It is based on action undertaken by rebels during the Algerian War (1954–1962) against the French government in North Africa, the most prominent being the eponymous Battle of Algiers, the capital of Algeria. It was shot on location in a Roberto Rossellini-inspired newsreel style: in black and white with documentary-type editing to add to its sense of historical authenticity, with mostly non-professional actors who had lived through the real battle. The film's score was composed by Pontecorvo and Ennio Morricone. It is often associated with Italian neorealist cinema.

The film concentrates mainly on revolutionary fighter Ali La Pointe during the years between 1954 and 1957, when guerrilla fighters of the FLN went into Algiers. Their actions were met by French paratroopers attempting to regain territory. The highly dramatic film is about the organization of a guerrilla movement and the illegal methods, such as torture, used by the French to stop it. Algeria succeeded in gaining independence from the French, which Pontecorvo addresses in the film's epilogue.

The film was met with international acclaim, and it is considered to be one of the greatest films of all time. It won the Golden Lion at the 27th Venice Film Festival among other awards and nominations. It also was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. A subject of sociopolitical controversy in France, the film was not screened in the country for five years. Insurgent groups and state authorities have considered it to be an important commentary on urban guerrilla warfare. In Sight and Sound's 2022 poll of the greatest films of all time, it ranked 45th on the critics' list and 22nd with directors.

In 2008, the film was included on the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage's 100 Italian films to be saved, a list of 100 films that "have changed the collective memory of the country between 1942 and 1978."

The Girl Who Talked to Dolphins (BBC)

The Girl Who Talked To Dolphins by limukohou

"If there is a cartographer of altered states of consciousness—of the highways and byways of the inner trip—it is John Lilly, a rare combination of scientist and mystic." —Psychology Today

This documentary examines the work of Dr. John Lilly and his team in the 1960s when he was working on interspecies communication between humans and dolphins. The film contains extensive audio and film recordings from John Lilly's early work. The documentary tells the story of the most extraordinary experiment in the history of animal science. In the 1960s John Lilly flooded a house. He then invited a young woman to live there full-time with a dolphin. Their intention was to teach the dolphin to speak English. What happened next would change all their lives. For the first time those involved in the experiment reveal the secrets of the Dolphin House.

Between 1959 and 1968 Lilly wagered and lost his mainstream scientific career largely over this audacious, ultimately inconclusive bid to establish and document for scientific validation “communication with a nonhuman mind.” In that effort, however, he mobilized the best available tools, a cutting-edge array of cybernetic concepts. He leaned heavily on the information theory bound up with first-order cybernetics and operated with heuristic computational metaphors alongside the actual computers of his era. As I will elicit through some close readings of his texts, in that process Lilly also homed in on crucial epistemological renovations with a constructivist redescription of cognition that may have influenced and motivated his colleague Heinz von Foerster’s more renowned formulations, arriving in the early 1970s, of a second-order cybernetics- (Clarke).

John Lilly went on to write numerous books about inter and intra personal communication and awareness. His work with floatation tanks, LSD and telepathy are well known in both the scientific and in the counter culture communities. His essay, Programming and Metaprogramming in the Human Biocomputer is a classic for anyone studying the nature of consciousness. 

Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris - The Psychedelic State (two videos)

Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris - Psilocybin and the Psychedelic State from Matt Faw on Vimeo.
New research on Psilocybin and how psychedelics could be used in therapy to help with depression, addiction, and other problems of rigid thought patterns. Interview shot as part of forthcoming 3D Consciousness documentary.

Filmmaker: Matt Faw
Backgrounds videos are downloaded from YouTube, copyright of their prospective creators. Footage used for previsualization only and will be replaced.


New research using psychedelic drugs to understand the brain could lead to new treatments for mental disorders such as depression. Dr Robin Carhart-Harris will describe his research with these unusual compounds, which includes the first ever functional brain imaging studies with LSD and magic mushrooms. This talk was recorded at Imperial Festival 2015

Website for the research: http://psychedelicscience.org.uk/

Stone Forever (1999)

"Stone," is an Australian biker picture that was a huge hit in its day back in 1974 and has since become an enduring cult classic. Among the things we learn is that "Stone" star/co-writer/director/producer Sandy Harbutt was a really down-to-earth and approachable guy on the set of the film (alas, Harbutt never made another feature in the wake of "Stone" 's monumental success), bikers who are Vietnam war veterans find the depiction of their lifestyle in the movie to be honest and accurate, a real-life biker gang played the rival club the Black Hawks (these guys were paid with beer for their contribution to the flick!), lead actor Ken Shorter was an ex-cop who designed his own clothes, 400 bikers showed up to participate as extras in the famous highway funeral procession sequence, actor Vincent Gil did double duty as a grip, the movie received largely poor reviews from critics, but still proved to be a massive box office smash, a biker club called the Stone Social Club was formed in tribute to the film, and Harbutt and several other "Stone" folks stormed the Cannes Film Festival in 1980 in order to secure international distribution for the picture. Of course, such "Stone" cast and crew members as Hugh Keays-Byrne, Rebecca Gilling, editor Ian Barry, Roger Ward, Helen Morse, cinematographer Graham Lind, and Bindi Williams are all interviewed as well.

Arena BBC Who Is Poly Styrene? (1979)

Marianne Joan Elliott-Said (3 July 1957 – 25 April 2011), known by the stage name Poly Styrene, was a British musician, singer-songwriter, and frontwoman for the punk rock band X-Ray Spex.

MC5: A True Testimonial

I put the documentary up here...but it did not last long on YouTube and was taken down...I am leaving the post here as it is one of the most inspiring films about a rock n rock revolution band you will ever see. The MC5 were more than a band, in their prime they were a whole way of living and understaning the world. We will sadly not see their like again, at least not in the plastic corporate world of emotions for cash that we live in today

MC5: A True Testimonial is a 2002 feature-length documentary film about the MC5, a Detroit-based rock band of the 1960s and early 1970s. The film was produced by Laurel Legler and directed by David C. Thomas; the couple spent more than seven years working on the project. Although the MC5 are considered very influential today, they were relatively obscure in their time.

To make the film, Thomas collected photographs and film clips of varying quality, including U.S. government surveillance footage of the MC5's performance at the protests that took place outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. He interviewed the surviving members of the band and people closely associated with it. In the editing room, Thomas matched the band's recordings to the silent footage he had collected.

MC5: A True Testimonial made its premiere on August 22, 2002, at the Chicago Underground Film Festival. Three weeks later it made its international premiere on September 11 at the Toronto International Film Festival. In November of that year, the film was awarded an "Honorable Mention" as a debut feature at the Raindance Film Festival.



MC5 Black to Comm (1970)

Brion Gysin Teaching

Cut ups slightly modified by modern means with lecture by Bryon Gysin track 04 called "Teaching" from LP, live London 1982