Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer (1698-1760), known as the Ba'al Shem Tov ("Master of the Good Name"), is one of the most beloved and celebrated, yet elusive, figures in Jewish history. Today, Jews worldwide – and even non-Jews – revere him as the founder of the Hasidic movement, a 18th-century offshoot of Judaism that promotes a mystical interpretation of the Bible, and as a model of piety and spirituality. The documentary A FIRE IN THE FOREST explores the life and legacy of the Ba'al Shem Tov through interviews with religious leaders and scholars, and on-location footage. The title derives from a tale about rabbis finding a hidden fire in the forest where they could appeal to God for help and have their prayers answered.
A documentary about the legendary Japanese filmmaker.
A hilarious introduction, using as examples some of the best films ever made, to some of Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst Slavoj Žižek's most exciting ideas on personal subjectivity, fantasy and reality, desire and sexuality.
This compelling film represents a rare record of an original genius. In Jung on Film, the pioneering psychologist tells us about his collaboration with Sigmund Freud, about the insights he gained from listening to his patients' dreams, and about the fascinating turns his own life has taken. Dr. Richard I. Evans, a Presidential Medal of Freedom nominee, interviews Jung, giving us a unique understanding of Jung's many complex theories, while depicting Jung as a sensitive and highly personable human being.
The Stanford prison experiment was a landmark psychological study of the human response to captivity, in particular, to the real world circumstances of prison life, and the effects of imposed social roles on behaviour. It was conducted in 1971 by a team of researchers led by Philip Zimbardo of Stanford University.
In 1244, Jelaluddin Rumi, a Sufi scholar in Konya, Turkey, met an itinerant dervish, Shams of Tabriz. A powerful friendship ensued. When Shams died, the grieving Rumi gripped a pole in his garden, and turning round it, began reciting imagistic poetry about inner life and love of God. After Rumi's death, his son founded the Mevlevi Sufi order, the whirling dervishes. Lovers of Rumi's poems comment on their power and meaning, including religious historian Huston Smith, writer Simone Fattal, poet Robery Bly, and Coleman Barks, who reworks literal translations of Rumi into poetic English. Musicians accompany Barks and Bly as they recite their versions of several of Rumi's ecstatic poems.
A film about the noted American linguist/political dissident and his warning about corporate media's role in modern propaganda.
This documentary examines how Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime made use of ancient mysticism, occultism, and mind-control techniques in their efforts to win the war.
In his lifetime, Thomas Merton was hailed as a prophet and censured for his outspoken social criticism. For nearly 27 years he was a monk of the austere Trappist order, where he became an eloquent spiritual writer and mystic as well as an anti-war advocate and witness to peace. Merton: A Film Biography provides the first comprehensive look at this remarkable 20th century religious philosopher who wrote, in addition to his immensely popular autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain, over 60 books on some of the most pressing social issues of our time, some of which are excerpted here. Merton offers an engaging profile of a man whose presence in the world touched millions of people and whose words and thoughts continue to have a profound impact and relevance today.
In "psychanalyse", a two part documentary, the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan answers to questions submitted by his son-in-law Jacques-Alain Miller under the direction of Benoit Jacquot. The Office de Radiodiffusion Television Francaise (ORTF, the french public TV) broadcast this program. This documentary and its text became famous because this is the only televisual experience practiced by Lacan. A fair amount is made of the fact that Lacan was renowned for his powers of seduction and what effect this had on transference in the clinical setting. According to some of the interviewees, he could be irresistibly seductive, so much so that some thought him "monster".
Mostashregh
The film consists mainly of interviews with readers of Freud in Brazil and several places in Europe, and touches on topics such as history, translation, culture, language and, especially, Freud himself.
A documentary on sufism
“Manual of Evasion LX94” is a thought-provoking Dadaist film about time by the Portuguese director Edgar Pêra. It was shot in Lisbon in 1994 and stars Terence McKenna, Robert Anton Wilson and Rudy Rucker. Time is explored from many unusual angles, while Pêra fills the screen with a wide variety of bizarre and mind-warping imagery.
A series of interviews are conducted concerning people's beliefs towards the possibility of an afterlife. The interviews are filmed against a set of strange backdrops, and are intercut with clips from classic films and a variety of stock footage.
A documentary about Jacques Lacan and his influence on the main tendencies of modern psychoanalysis. It begins with a series of interviews with psychoanalysts who knew Lacan, and then presents an overview of Lacanian theory and practice that explores what actually happens in psychoanalysis.
Do you know Lacan, which many consider as the greatest psychoanalyst since Freud? Beyond the myth, the legends and sometimes, the curses, this film by Gérard Miller allows us to discover his work and his personality, through the testimony of his patients, his students, and also his relatives. Born with the XXth century into an upper-middle-class Catholic family, a psychiatrist by training, with an encyclopaedic knowledge of culture, a friend of Picasso, Levi-Strauss and Sartre, Lacan was a great theoretician, an outstanding practitioner, and he remains the most modern, the most challenging and even the most sulphurous of psychoanalysts. The director Gerard Miller met Lacan thanks to his brother, Jacques-Alain, the most faithful of his students, who married his daughter Judith. Their close and intense relationship makes this film exceptional.
Explores the incredibly complex backstory of Ted Kaczynski, the infamous Unabomber. This exquisitely crafted inquiry into the rationale of this mythic figure situates him within a late 20th century web of technology—a system that he grew to oppose. A marvelously subversive approach to the history of the Internet, this insightful documentary combines speculative travelogue and investigative journalism to trace contrasting countercultural responses to the cybernetic revolution.
A kaleidoscopic road trip through modern mystical Americana, revealing the hidden magic that’s happening all around us. A living tribute to the glimmering pockets of light beneath the crumbling facade of the American Dream, inviting viewers to slow down and engage with the unseen.
The Sufi and the Scientist is the collective story of Sufi healer Sayyid Arif Hussain, the medieval Sufi Sheikh Haji Ali, and Dr. Thornton Streeter, a scientist working in the realm of human consciousness.