Psychedelics have undoubtedly had an impact on the film business. Some movies have a reputation for taking their audience on crazy adventures. A number of performers and filmmakers have talked about how a vacation has impacted their lives. The effect of psychedelic substances and psychedelic experiences are characteristics of the genre of films known as "psychedelic films." These movies are one of the new strategies to gain healing with psychedelics and self-help through cinema. Let’s explore the role of psychedelic documentaries and healing in this article.

What is Cinema Therapy?

When you watch a movie with awareness, you can frequently identify parallel issues or solutions to a situation you're dealing with. You may recognize yourself as a character at times. Watching movies gives you the chance to connect with your emotions and allow your mind to process life's highs and lows. It takes more than just setting up and obtaining a snack to enjoy cinema treatment. You can find feelings, answers, or events in your life that you can relate to and gain a feeling of self-help through cinema therapy. Several filmmakers worked on psychedelic films and documentaries.

How Psychedelic Films Work?

This series attempts to broaden the concept of psychedelic cinema through the hallucinogenic lens, rather than concentrating just on the restricted genre of LSD films that more overtly represent or reference drug use and psychedelic culture. The movies aim to transport audiences to a different mental state where the unexpected becomes feasible and the unthinkable becomes possible through amplified sounds and images. These psychedelic documentaries offer opportunities to bend, expand, and contract perceptions in ways that previous moviegoers rarely experienced. Psychedelic Cinema foregrounds the idea of a "cinema of attractions," as defined by renowned film scholar Tom Gunning, in which fantastic imagery and view take place over story structure. The storyline of these films was constructed on the bases of mental health and psychedelics healing goals.

Role of Psychedelic Films in Mental Healing

The purpose of psychedelics in the film industry is to experiment with the audience's senses and detach them from reality if the goal of the drug is to change one's state of consciousness in order to examine one's mind from a different perspective. Yes, the majority of psychedelic films can be enjoyed sober, and many people can gain personal insights without using drugs. However, other people wish to escape reality in order to broaden their horizons, and movies frequently provide access to opportunities that many people would never discover on their own. This is how the concept of self-help through cinema therapy works.

Some Psychedelic Films You Must Watch

Here are some options of psychedelic documentaries for you to gain mental healing.

Film name: Breaking Out

Directed by: David Glass

The main focus of "Breaking Out" is a turbulent piano improvisation that David Glass recorded a number of years ago. With a range of footage expressing a wide range of deep emotions and powerful natural forces, the short film is a psychological rollercoaster, yet there is also beauty in the chaos. The music is in rhythm with the action, just like in a ballet.

Film name: Ayahuasca Now

Directed by: Carlos Cejas

These days, Ayahuasca is a compelling documentary about a group of men and women who served in the wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. They travel to the Amazon jungle in quest of a final opportunity at atonement because they feel imprisoned by their pain and misinterpreted by others around them. Only the sounds of a fight without sound.

Film name: Aware — Glimpses of Consciousness

Directed by: Frauke Sandig and Eric Black.

Six of the world's top experts on the nature of our thoughts and how they relate to the wider world are featured in Aware. While some take a scientific approach to the awareness issue, others take a spiritual one. Psychedelics are used by some. Others don't. However, their observations exhibit a startling consistency. In this movie, the numerous mysteries of the human mind continue to elude both the spiritualists and the scientists. Gagliano, whose scientific studies seem to suggest that plants have the capacity for hearing, seeing, communicating, learning, remembering, and feeling pain, is the subject of some of the most intriguing moments. Until you lay in a field of flowers after taking 300 micrograms of LSD, this is one of those theories that is difficult to believe.

Film name: Feedback

Directed by: Xavier Coleman

With encouragement from his AI therapist, NYC transplant Evan, who is desperate for a break from the city and his computer screen, embarks on a camping vacation. He soon meets Sydney, who rents the campground. The two choose to take a unique strain of hallucinogenic mushrooms under her direction. As the lines between the virtual and the real world start to blur, what starts out as an escapist meet-cute gradually turns into a visceral nightmare.

Movie name: Alice in Wonderland

Directed by: Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson, Hamilton Luske.

Alice in the Wonderland is one of those psychedelic films that gained popularity in the 20th century. Disney's visually stunning adaptation of Alice in Wonderland, now hailed as a proto-psychedelic classic, did not receive much praise during its first year of release. After being rediscovered as a "head movie" by young audiences in the late 1960s, Alice in Wonderland found new life when it was rereleased in the early 1970s and became an overwhelming success on college campuses, where its whimsical story of magic mushrooms and rabbit holes clearly found new resonance.

Conclusion

Psychedelic films have a tendency to offer self-help through cinema and mental healing in an interesting way. On the other hand, stimulants result in sensations of energy and self-help through these films. People from all around the world have developed and shared a great deal of psychedelic culture as a result of these experiences.

Are Psychedelic Films the New Self-Help? Exploring Consciousness Through Cinema