The Hermetic Jung

For a series of programs made for TV Fnac, Philippe Grandrieux meets different people who tell us, each in their own point of view, a story of images. After Paul Virilio (The World is an image) and before Jean-Louis Schaeffet, Le Trou noir (AKA The Black Hole) gives us the enlightened reflections of psychanalyst Juan David Nasio about real and reality.

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.

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.

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.

A film about the noted American linguist/political dissident and his warning about corporate media's role in modern propaganda.

An unconventional biography by Oscar nominee Paola di Florio and Sundance winner Lisa Leeman about Hindu mystic Paramahansa Yogananda who brought yoga and meditation to the West in 1920 and authored the spiritual classic "Autobiography of a Yogi," which became the go-to book for seekers from George Harrison to Steve Jobs.

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.

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 the legendary Japanese filmmaker.

In the early nineties, Dr. Jacobo Grinberg’s career was blooming and he gained lots of international credit as a researcher in the fields of telepathy and neurophysiology at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico. When Dr. Grinberg mysteriously disappears in 1994, the police find no trace of him. The only thing that is clear, is that all his research material, including his computers, disappeared along with him.

Mostashregh

Tens of thousands of years ago man stood upright; looked around and discovered existence. He was suddenly conscious of himself and the universe. And soon he needed to explain everything he saw and experienced. He embarked on a journey of discovery so profound it gave rise to the religions of the globe and even modern science. What is the meaning of life; is there life after death; and is there a God? These were the most fundamental questions anybody has ever dared to ask. Today, after thousands of years of searching and the development of modern science, we are moving closer to the answers than ever before. What we have discovered is that existence in the macro world matches that of the micro world. As it is above, so it is below and this understanding unlocks the answers we are searching for. Through quantum physics we can now finally look upon the face of God and see the meaning of existence.

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.

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 journey into the labyrinthine heart of ideology, which shapes and justifies both collective and personal beliefs and practices: with an infectious zeal and voracious appetite for popular culture, Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst Slavoj Žižek analyzes several of the most important films in the history of cinema to explain how cinematic narrative helps to reinforce prevailing ethics and political ideas.

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.

A documentary on sufism

Crownsville Hospital: From Lunacy to Legacy is a feature-length documentary film highlighting the history of the Crownsville State Mental Hospital in Crownsville, MD.

“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.

Sanctuary explores queer spirituality and utopian sexualities through the figure of Purusha Androgyne Larkin (1934–1988), a monk, pioneering gay filmmaker, and self-proclaimed cosmic-erotic mystic. Larkin’s 1981 book, 'The Divine Androgyne According to Purusha', challenged repression with a spiritual vision rooted in eroticism and presented a radical path to cosmic-erotic consciousness through ‘extreme’ forms of sexual pleasure. Sanctuary explores Larkin's attempt to form a utopian, pleasure-based spiritual community, and considers the complex legacies of his ideas in queer culture. Shot on 16mm, the film weaves together the voices of Larkin’s friends and followers, creating a portrait in absentia of a figure ahead of his time.