ENGTANGLED MINDS

feature documentary in progress

A meditative cinematic journey into the minds of five people harnessing the power of their unconscious to treat their illnesses.

Can the unconscious mind heal mental and physical pain? With stunning cinematography and immersive sound, this film follows five people seeking altered states of consciousness to treat medical conditions and mental illnesses that confound modern medicine. Distinct rituals from around the world intersect in a single narrative arc, taking viewers on an experiential journey into the lives and minds of five people who are healing from within.

Poleon Williams makes African musical instruments in his Florida carport and plays trance-inducing rhythms that have helped cure his post-traumatic anxiety. Christina Nice floats in a tub of highly salted water, entering the dreamlike state that has healed shooting leg pains from her Lyme disease. Isabel García makes offerings to sacred mushrooms in Mexico’s remote Sierra Mazateca, then ingests them with a Mazatec medicine woman to seek answers for her inexplicable sadness. Buddhist nuns light incense, chant rhythmically in Cantonese, and sit in silent meditation to settle mind and body. A clinical psychologist leads Bhargav Lenka into a hypnotic state, describing how his unconscious mind can serve as a resource against chronic pain from his car accident.

The film is structured in three movements. It opens in an uncanny altered state of consciousness, drifting between several practices and into the subjects’ daily lives to explore the origin of their pain and how Western biomedicine failed them. The second movement winds back to the point of induction, gradually bringing subjects – and viewers – into a deeply meditative state. After intimate revelations of their internal journeys, the participants emerge from their trances in the final movement to re-integrate with the world and reflect on their experiences, inviting viewers to do the same.

This film attempts not to provide answers but to open up space for further reflection. Will unlocking their unconscious minds help these patients overcome their physical and mental pain? Might viewers’ meditative experiences lead to any new ideas about the potential within their own minds? Could these therapies – deriving from distinct cultures around the world but converging on a similar trajectory – offer promise for some of the intractable pain of our times?

Artistic Approach

This film will take viewers on an immersive cinematic journey into five characters’ unconscious minds – and perhaps deeper into their own minds. Beautiful imagery and a textured 5.1 sound design weave a complex web from five culturally distinct altered-state practices, drawing the audience into an increasingly abstract, intimate space.

Scenes from the characters’ daily lives flow dreamlike apparently from within their brains rather than from the conventional verité position outside their bodies – a form of “observance” instead of “observation,” as poet and theorist Fred Moten puts it. Mesmerizing brain scans highlight the practices’ physiological commonalities, and metaphorically reference exchanges of energy, pain, and wisdom.

This project represents an important turning point in my career: an attempt to channel the visual, the aural, the sensorial, the emotional – and to explore the potential of cinema to represent consciousness itself.

Impact

Increasing numbers of people are struggling with conditions like anxiety, depression, addiction, chronic pain, and PTSD that are not sufficiently addressed by our modern healthcare system, despite its sophistication.

The Western biomedical model has not historically embraced the use of our minds to heal our bodies. But doctors and neuroscientists are beginning to recognize the healing power of practices that ignite the power of the unconscious mind. Research reveals that psychedelics can enhance psychotherapy; meditation and hypnosis can help manage blood pressure and alleviate symptoms of depression, anxiety, and chronic pain; and flotation and rhythm-induced trances may dramatically reduce stress. These processes share neurological signatures which seem to correspond with experiences of deep introspection, spiritual awakening, and dissolution of the ego.

Our film aims to shed light on these practices’ demonstrated efficacy and help move the needle on understanding, access, and cultural competence. Our proposed impact campaign has two main parts: community screenings to reach people who suffer from anxiety, depression, addiction, PTSD, and chronic pain, so that they can learn about treatments involving altered states of consciousness; and educational screenings at medical schools, professional conferences for doctors and medical health professionals, health insurance industry conferences, and healthcare policy-making venues, to help ensure that these practices are prescribed and reimbursed by insurance.

Our Team

We have an amazing group of collaborators on this project: producer Emily Abi-Kheirs, DP Thomas Danielcizk, consulting editor Cecilia Préstamo, consulting producer Lucila Moctezuma, composer Ted Reichman, and sound designer Ernst Karel.

Funding

Support for this project has been generously provided by LEF Moving Image Fund, Human Family Unity Foundation, Harvard Initiative on the Study of Psychedelics in Culture and Society, the McMillan-Stewart Foundation, Bob Hong Foundation, and Proyecto teonanácatl.

How you can help

This film is currently at the rough cut stage and we are seeking completion and distribution/impact funding. You can make a tax-deductible donation through the Center for Independent Documentary or email Julie Mallozzi for more information.