Cinema Paradiso: Power&Control LSD in the 60´s

Power and Control: LSD in the 60s

Aron Ranen (2005, USA, 70 minutes)

Aron Ranen, San Francisco’s foremost Gonzo documentarian, returns to IndieFest with a special work-in-progress screening of his latest feature film – a peripatetic journey to discover the secret history of psychedelics. He follows the story wherever it leads him – from the legitimate experiments conducted at the Harvard Divinity school to rather bizarre plans to unleash LSD on enemy troops on the battlefield.

He interviews Ram Dass (who was Richard Alpert when he was still Timothy Leary’s associate at Harvard), visits Paul Krassner former editor of The Realist, ‘Monkey Mike’ – a North Bay researcher who (with the government’s blessing) kept primates in huge cages in his backyard and was gave them LSD as late as the mid-70s, and he locates the notorious North Beach brothel used by the CIA to dose unsuspecting Johns (as agents observed the resultant chaos from behind one-way mirrors). Drop ‘em if you got ‘em.

Más...


Ver Parte #2
Ver Parte #3
Ver Parte #4 (Fin)

Hofmann's Potion traces D-lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) from its initial discovery in 1943 by Swiss chemist Dr. Albert Hofmann, through its heyday in the 1960s counterculture, to its present status as a banned or controlled substance in many Western countries. The film offers a sensitive and sympathetic portrayal of the chemists, biochemists, psychiatrists, and psychologists in the 1940s and '50s who privileged the model of mental illness based on brain chemistry over and above the psychoanalytic model in vogue at that time. Stationed in Canada, the United States, England, and Czechoslovakia, these pioneers made unprecedented advancements in treating various mental illnesses with LSD. Yet despite the rigorous standards the researchers adhered to, their groundbreaking work was choked out by the negative publicity that cropped up around amateurish thrill-seekers on LSD in the 1960s.

Director Connie Littlefield's documentary unfolds through a series of interviews with nine researchers, juxtaposed with archival interviews from the 1950s and '60s. Since the narrator intervenes only minimally and there is no visible or audible interviewer, interviewees appear to address viewers directly. Littlefield presents the interviewees as competent, intelligent, articulate academics with a thorough knowledge of LSD and a great compassion for human beings. The researchers are just as passionate about their work in the contemporary footage as they are in the archival clips.

Más...

Ver peli: Hofmann´s Potion