Mind Altering Cinematography: Psychedelic Re-Orientations of the Unconscious in Film 

Abstract

While in the mid-twentieth century film theory developed from and in relation to psychoanalytic conceptions of the unconscious, this presentation proposes to look at the lessons from research in psychedelics, offering a psychedelic re-orientation of the cinematographic unconsciousness. Stanislav Grof’s work on the transformative potential of non-ordinary states of consciousness, based on over fifty years of research, offers a holistic and philosophical approach towards the realms of the human unconscious. This presentation argues that many of the experiences described by Grof, have found another way of expression in cinema, and suggests that our media culture itself belongs to the vast realms of the collective unconscious where we have strange encounters, Good and Bad Trips, that lead to profound questions about what it means to be human in a transforming world in crisis.

Biography

Patricia Pisters is professor of film at the Department of Media Studies of the University of Amsterdam. She is board member of the OPEN Foundation for Research in Psychedelic Science. Her publications include The Neuro-Image: A Deleuzian Film-Philosophy of Digital Screen Culture (SUP, 2012) and several articles on psychedelic (film) culture. She is editor of the special issue on Deleuze and Guattari and the Psychedelic Revival (17.4, 2023) and is currently working on a book on Stanislav Grof, Cinema and the Unconscious. See for articles, her blog, audio-visual material and other information also www.patriciapisters.com.