MDFF 2021 - AWARE Glimpses of Consciousness
What is consciousness? Is it in all living beings? Why are we predisposed for mystical experience? And what happens when we die?
AWARE follows six brilliant researchers approaching the mystery from radically different perspectives, opening as a science film but emerging beyond the explicable.
Interview with Writer/Director/Producer Eric Black, Frauke Sandig
Congratulations! Why did you make your film?
The nature of consciousness, the idea behind AWARE, came directly from our experience on the first film in this trilogy, HEART OF SKY, HEART OF EARTH where we worked for three years with the indigenous Maya in Chiapas and Guatemala. Their deep spirituality where everything in nature is sacred, alive, and animate, stands in deep contrast to our Western capitalist worldview which sees nature as natural resources, objects to be exploited. When one of our protagonists, a Mayan spiritual leader reproached us during an interview, saying, "You white people always see everyone as separate - here the house, the tree, the animal, there you. In the indigenous world, everything is always connected." She provoked us to turn our camera around and examine our own beliefs about nature and consciousness. Thus this journey which brought us to AWARE, the second in the Heart of Sky, Heart of Earth Trilogy.
Imagine I’m a member of the audience. Why should I watch this film?
This question could be answered in a number of ways, i.e. to enjoy the extraordinary cinematography, engage with the equally extraordinary cello of Zoe Keating, meditate or ...
But in its most distilled form, AWARE is intended to be first, a feature length experience in consciousness and being conscious and second, a submersion into the awe of Nature.
Why make a film, a motion picture, about an abstract subject, consciousness, that has not yet even been defined? –Because the medium allows it to be provocative without taking sides, placing radically divergent viewpoints together on the same two-dimensional plane, and because film has the special capacity to allow the viewer to experience on a variety of sensual levels: Direct experience is primary to experiencing and understanding consciousness. The spectator can dive with the protagonists during their research deep into the ocean of consciousness and in their expeditions into Nature –yet experience their own personal journey.
How do personal and universal themes work in your film?
What is consciousness? Is it in all living beings? What happens when we die?
Those are at once very personal yet universal questions, ones which concern everyone of us. AWARE follows six brilliant researchers, each approaching consciousness from radically different perspectives, from within and without, both personal and universal: through high-tech brain research and Eastern Meditation, by scientifically exploring inner space through psychedelic substances and by investigating the consciousness of plants.
AWARE opens as a science film but emerges beyond well the explicable: While the origins of consciousness may well be unfathomable, the question often obscures an equally mysterious, deeply personal question: Why, from the scientific evidence, do we seem to be hardwired for mystical experience?
AWARE ultimately leads one on a voyage onto the ocean of consciousness, a contemplative, sensual meditation. A cinematic opus, it invites one to experience the awe and mystery as the researchers do, to dive in with them, returning to see the world anew, to review long-held beliefs and assumptions and initiate one’s own personal oceanic journey.
How have the script and film evolved over the course of their development?
Right now I (Eric) am in a completely different situation than during the filming of AWARE in terms of consciousness: I and my dear sister are taking care of my mid-ninety year old parents who are rapidly diminishing both physically and in terms of consciousness or so it seems. I say this because during my eight-month lockdown during the pandemic in total isolation with them, I became hyper aware of how much I owe them, and particularly my father aesthetically. He's a sculptor and has always insisted if one wasn't playing, one wasn't making art. Rather that's true for others I cannot say but it has certainly informed my own personal approach to cinematography specifically and to filmmaking generally. No, I do not start with specific images, motifs, a script or a specific conclusion in mind. Much is dependent on the unraveling of dreams. Frauke and I rarely have a pre-meditated concept. To us that would seem counter-productive. It's only over time, copious reading and experience that we notice possible motifs and reoccurring images, like interpreting thoughts as though they were dreams. For example, in AWARE, I would find myself drawn to images of water in all forms over and over again without initially understanding the metaphor that was building in my head of an “ocean of consciousness” or “swimming in an ocean of consciousness” and perhaps it's counterpart, “a fish cannot discover water”. At some point only later did this metaphor/motif become conscious to me. Only then was I able to develop water as the dominant motif/metaphor/cinematic theme in AWARE. Or one could say, only then did I become aware that I was aware of what was going on in my subconscious. This is the way we most like to work as it involves a journey, our own personal journeys.
What type of feedback have you received so far?
Now the pandemic lockdown has subsided, beyond all expectations...
What are you looking to achieve by having your film more visible on www.wearemovingstories.com?
Of course it is thrilling to have the film reach the most people possible but really, that is not the goal. The goal is to provoke us to rethink our connection to the greater whole and the profoundest of mysteries –by whatever means. And the coming environmental catastrophe has only made the urgency of this quest critical to our survival.
Who do you need to come on board (producers, sales agents, buyers, distributors, film festival directors, journalists) to amplify this film’s message?
Film festival directors and journalists would certainly be welcome. But this time round, forced by the closure or drastic reduction of festivals, we have been forced –maybe for our own greater good– to rethink distribution, trying to approach broader yet specific audience through direct marketing. Some groups will be obvious, i.e. Religious leaders, Buddhist groups, Spiritual groups such as Yoga, Meditation, Consciousness, Environmental groups, People interested in science and consciousness research or in the healing qualities of psychedelics biology, brain research, plant research, neuroscience, psychology… but really we feel it could reach a far greater public.
What type of impact and/or reception would you like this film to have?
I would hope it would impact people who have a deep love and appreciation of science yet hunger for a deeper sense of the mystery, the spiritual, i.e. "people like us". At the start of our research into consciousness, the idea there was a space of “pure awareness” was not something I had truly entertained or ever thought I would hear myself say. It was Roland Griffiths’ Johns Hopkins psilocybin studies that pulled me in while counterintuitively, were most shocking to my own sensibility. Here was a quiet well-mannered, supremely, methodical scientist of the highest standards inducing “mystical experience” in random adults with no such previous experiences. Almost 80% were reporting this five hour session to be one of the five most important events of their lives, on par with the birth of a first child or the death of a parent. Amazing. 40% were reporting it to be the single most important event of their lives. Amazing. Terminal cancer patients in another study were reporting losing their fear of death. …and these studies were paralleling the accounts being presented by our other protagonists. At this point not only was I enthralled but thought these startling studies an ideal starting point to introduce an general audience to the same sense of awe we ourselves had experienced ---all the while hanging on to the handrail of science.
Thus the best reaction, the one which has been most gratifying so far, was from a cousin, someone strongly entrenched in materialist science, who said the film changed his life.
What’s a key question that will help spark a debate or begin a conversation about this film?
In what way is consciousness political?
Like many in the West, we grew up believing Science and Religion, like Church and State, should remain forever separate: Science with the knowable, religion, the unknowable –with consciousness belonging to the latter. We gave it no further thought.
But if one is not actively thinking about consciousness and what it means, someone or some ideological ‘faith’, ‘religion’, ‘philosophy’ or dogma will define it for you. Witness the continuing rise of populist politicians and fundamentalism in all their contorted forms. Increasingly they determine what has meaning and what is meant. Defining consciousness is the most invisible yet most powerful form of political control. To define consciousness is also power. Conversely, it is no coincidence mystics have always been persecuted, oppressed and killed – one need only think of the Church, its Inquisition, the witch hunts of the Middle Ages, the brutality of the ‘Conquistadors’ with a sword in one hand and their bible in the other in the ‘New World’ or ISIS today … Whoever is able to independently experience ‘pure consciousness’ or put another way, to have a ‘direct line’ to the ‘divine’ is an enormous threat to power and dogma. Experiencing and having access to a greater consciousness erases the need for mediating institutions, indoctrination and even –-witness the 60ies--- war. That alone is revolutionary and an unalienable birthright worth struggling for. Becoming aware you are aware is possibly the most powerful and self-liberating force in anyone’s personal development and thus collectively, the world.
Would you like to add anything else?
Question: The theme of death takes up a lot of space at the end of the film - it's the longest sequence in the film where nothing is said. Why was this aspect so important to you, initiating with Rick's narration on the death of his son, to the sacrifice scene in Mexico to Matthieu Ricard’s thoughts on rebirth?
FRAUKE: When my mother died a few years ago after a long illness, I had to deal with the subject of death as never before. It was also an occasion to deal more intensively with the apparent duality of body and spirit or consciousness. Does something remain when the body dies? Is there a deeper, more fundamental, more mystical, more timeless level of reality? And can this perhaps even be explored scientifically? These questions have occupied me since then and they occupy me now.
What other projects are the key creatives developing or working on now?
We are working on the third in the Heart of Sky trilogy...
Interview: July 2021
We Are Moving Stories embraces new voices in drama, documentary, animation, TV, web series, music video, women's films, LGBTQIA+, POC, First Nations, scifi, supernatural, horror, world cinema. If you have just made a film - we'd love to hear from you. Or if you know a filmmaker - can you recommend us? More info: Carmela
Interview
Writer/Director/Producer
Eric Black, Frauke Sandig
AWARE is the 4th collaboration between Eric Black and Frauke Sandig.
HEART OF SKY, HEART OF EARTH, 2011, 115 film festivals incl. IDFA Masters, DokLeipzig, Vancouver IFF, Planete Doc, Warsaw, Thessaloniki International Doc. Festival, Margaret Mead, 15 awards incl.: 1st Prize Planet in Focus. Won awards or opened every human rights festival in the Americas.
FROZEN ANGELS, 2005, Sundance FF. Audience Award at Visions du Réel, Nyon, Prix de Cinephage Creteil, Special Jury Mention at FICCO, DokLeipzig, HotDocs, Mill Valley, Sheffield, Vancouver IFF. Chosen by IDA for Oscar qualification.
AFTER THE FALL, 2000, Berlinale, German Camera Prize, Golden Gate Award at San Francisco IFF; 42 int. film festivals, incl. IDFA, Karlovy Vary and MOMA.
Length:
1:42
Looking for:
Journalists, film festival directors
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/awaremovie
More info:
Where Can I Watch It?
A theatrical release is planned in the US and Germany for September 2021 (US: Area23a, Germany: Piffl Medien)
Millenium Docs Against Gravity Film Festival, Poland, September 2021