A little of your cash my way will go a long way to make this film.

In the last few years psychedelics have been given new respectability in science and in therapy. Universities in Zurich, at Harvard, at the University of California, at John Hopkins, are conducting human trials with psychedelics to treat a number of afflictions from posttraumatic stress disorder, cluster headaches, addictions, to end of life anxiety issues. The FDA, in April of 2010, approved a phase two trial with MDMA for posttraumatic stress disorder. All of the patients in this trial will be U.S. army vets from the war in Iraq suffering from PTSD.
 
Think of this crowdfunding as an experiment in social neuroscience lets get transpersonal together. Send me your thoughts, and your support in any way you can.

The taboo against these drugs is closely aligned with societies fear of the ecstatic state. A state of mind that loosens the self from the roles assigned to us by society and by language. Psychedelics are threatening drugs not because of harmful physical side effects, of which they have remarkably very little, but because they can so thoroughly throw into question the edifice of self identity and starkly confront the nature of consciousness itself.

My film is about the science and medicine of how these drugs effect the neurological system and how those effects are related directly to how we understand the world around us, how experiential they effect consciousness and what that means for our understanding of ourselves, our relationship with others, and our understanding of the world.

In partnership with the executive producer Mark Achbar, (The Corporation) and Betsy Carson, and with the addition of our European co-producer, Oval Filmemacher, Berlin, I have been developing and shooting this film over the last two years. We have shot extensively in Canada, the USA and Europe.


No one else but you should be in control of what you think, no one but you should control your consciousness, no one but you should control what substances you are permitted to ingest. 

When you select one of the options please let me know how you discovered the campaign and send me your snail mail address so I can mail you the DVD/blu-ray disk.  I'll also include a free disk (when you select the higher costing perks) of my film on Aldous Huxley the intellectual grand father of the psychedelic movement and one of the greatest intellects of the 20th century I'll mail you the Huxley documentary on receipt of your contribution.

Review of the Huxley film>>>

Site of the Huxley film >>

We're making a comprehensive film that will be highly engaging and useful for the community; one that will make a serious impact on how the general public perceives psychedelics. We're making a film that encourages health professionals to embrace the therapeutic potential of these substances, and for the public to demand that this potential be fully explored rationally, scientifically, and spiritually. We want to promote the end of prohibition of psychedelics and facilitate their safe and holistic use.


Director/Producer: Oliver Hockenhull

Oliver is a Vancouver based filmmaker, writer, and media artist. In 2003 and 2004 he was the visiting filmmaker at Northwestern University, Chicago.

His films are iconoclastic, visionary meals, spiced by an intimate, poetic, and enlightening perspective into the complexity of issues and subjects under examination. He has concentrated on pivotal subjects; the social and intellectual import of the eminent writer, Aldous Huxley, an experimental film essay on evolution that features Richard Dawkins (and the gorillas of the London Zoo), and an essay on the built environment that extends from the early works of Mies van der Rohe to the steps of the Burning Ghats of Varanasi.

The films and media art have shown at such events and venues as the Museum of Modern Art, NYC, the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., the Kunsthalle, Basel, the International Documentary Film Festival of Amsterdam (finalist for the IDFA Joris Ivens Award), the Sao Paulo International Film Festival, the International Leipzig Festival for Documentary Film, the Melbourne International Film Festival, MIT/Boston, the Contemporary Cultural Centre of Barcelona, the Vancouver International Film Festival (Finalist for the NFB Documentary Award), the Nouveau Cinema Festival Montreal, the South African Architecture Film Festival, the Chicago International Film Festival & the Kerala India International Film Festival.

Executive Producer: Mark Achbar

Mark Achbar has worked in film and television production for over 30 years. He is one of a handful of non-fiction feature filmmakers reaching large international audiences through mainstream theatres, TV, DVD, and the internet. He was behind the two most successful Canadian feature documentaries ever made, as Co-director and Co-producer on Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, and as Co-director, Producer, and Executive Producer on The Corporation. His films popularize radical critiques and win dozens of prestigious awards.

Other Ways You Can Help

Please do get the word out.  Use the tools available.  Let us not lose the opportunity of the network because it has become so cluttered with the unnecessary.

What We Need & What You Get

This is a feature, theatrical documentary.  It is also an art work and an educational / philosophical journey into the fullness of the unconditioned mind.  A piece that will radiate the joy and heart of the psychedelic state, the layers of ourselves and the light of the soul and the spirit of openness as well as to instruct that the misuse of these substances is not only ill advised but quite dangerous.  What we need is what you can give.  No bullshit.

Though I have put this campaign at $8,000. the cost will be quite a bit higher.  Though I have made films on shoestring budgets, this one deserves to be finished with as much elegance and complexity as the subject demands.  The intent is to complete the piece on HD and do a blu-ray disk of the show.