A playful story about the microcircuitry of love.
Nice Dreams - it rhymes with ice creams. And that's what Cheech and Chong are selling in this thoroughly wacky comedy. The outrageous, permanently spaced-out duo sells enough of their "specially mixed" ice cream to take the cash and realize their fondest dreams: new guitars, islands in the sun and beautiful women. But, of course, not everything goes as planned. While celebrating their wealth in a new wave Chinese restaurant, Cheech meets his long-lost love Donna, and promptly escorts her to her posh penthouse. He soon learns, however, that Donna's boyfriend, an ex-con named Animal, is on his way to her boudoir. Meanwhile, Chong has unwittingly exchanged all their money for a worthless bank check - and the only way to get it back is to escape into a nearby insane asylum.
In the later 1960s, two hippies are forced to leave their friends as they are wanted by the FBI, who sees them as criminals. They hide in the jungle for 20 years, secluded from the outside world. In the later 1980s, the find out that a secret war is about to start in the US, and decide to return to New York to tell someone about it.
How to Operate Your Brain, is a 29 minute, guided, electronic (spoken/musical) meditation. In it, Dr. Leary tries to impart to the listener essential aspects of his visionary LSD experiences. While it may have been intended for use with drugs to provide some of the positive "set" and "setting" that he saw as essential for a good "trip", it stands alone as a profound, guided meditation. In it, you will hear some of the central, sacred principles of Yoism.
"CITYSCRAPES" takes you on a 24-hour voyeuristic journey through the bedrooms, bathrooms, bars, cars, clubs, restaurants and back alleys of the lives of the young and hip in post modern Los Angeles. Ten intertwined stories follow eighteen main characters as they deal with the twists and turns of everyday life in the mega-metropolis.
On a quest to fulfill a friend's last wish, Joe takes to the desert road on his 1957 Harley-Davidson. Joined by wannabe biker Sam, Joe journeys from Los Angeles to Nevada, meeting all sorts of characters along the way.
Assembled from never before seen footage shot in 1983, this film documents controversial Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt's unlikely bid for the White House after a gunman's bullet left him partially paralyzed.
At Folsom Prison with Dr. Timothy Leary is an extraordinary counterculture document, filmed during Leary’s incarceration there. Under 30 minutes in length, this 1973 film shows Leary at his most engaging and personable. It’s a testament to his considerable charm that he was able to pull off such a performance, considering that the prison warden and other officials were sitting across the room listening as this was filmed. Leary discusses his jailbreak (intimating that the daughter of a United States senator he refuses to name helped him), the revolution in consciousness and drugs, Eldridge Cleaver and what it feels like to be an imprisoned philosopher.
Long before Timothy Leary urged a generation to "tune in, turn on and drop out," lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD, was being used by researchers trying to understand the human mind. This documentary is a fascinating look at the story of "acid" before it hit the streets. Featuring interviews with many LSD pioneers, Hofmann's Potion is much more than a simple chronicle of the drug's early days. With thoughtful interviews, beautiful music and stunning cinematography, it is an invitation to look at LSD, and our world, with a more open, compassionate mind.
Emmy Coer, a computer genius, devises a method of communicating with the past by tapping into undying information waves. She manages to reach the world of Ada Lovelace, founder of the idea of a computer language and proponent of the possibilities of the "difference engine." Ada's ideas were stifled and unfulfilled because of the reality of life as a woman in the nineteenth century. Emmy has a plan to defeat death and the past using her own DNA as a communicative agent to the past, bringing Ada to the present. But what are the possible ramifications?
A mental journey - historical, political, musical and metaphysical - in contemporary times, from the Sixties until nowadays.
The untold story of Charles Manson's obsession to become a rock star, his rise in the LA music scene, the celebrities who championed his music, his tragic friendship with The Beach Boys' Dennis Wilson and his descent into violence and chaos once his dreams fell apart.
Traces the Beats from Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac's meeting in 1944 at Columbia University to the deaths of Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs in 1997. Three actors provide dramatic interpretations of the work of these three writers, and the film chronicles their friendships, their arrival into American consciousness, their travels, frequent parodies, Kerouac's death, and Ginsberg's politicization. Their movement connects with bebop, John Cage's music, abstract expressionism, and living theater. In recent interviews, Ginsberg, Burroughs, Kesey, Ferlinghetti, Mailer, Jerry Garcia, Tom Hayden, Gary Snyder, Ed Sanders, and others measure the Beats' meaning and impact.
Eli is a burglar who is caught in the act by Twinkle, an heiress who coerces him into a sexual relationship. Their violent break-up makes him a fugitive in search of a new identity. He lands in a trashy trailer park where he touches the lives of several dysfunctional residents.
After World War II a group of young writers, outsiders and friends who were disillusioned by the pursuit of the American dream met in New York City. Associated through mutual friendships, these cultural dissidents looked for new ways and means to express themselves. Soon their writings found an audience and the American media took notice, dubbing them the Beat Generation. Members of this group included writers Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg. a trinity that would ultimately influence the works of others during that era, including the "hippie" movement of the '60s. In this 55-minute video narrated by Allen Ginsberg, members of the Beat Generation (including the aforementioned Burroughs, Anne Waldman, Peter Orlovsky, Amiri Baraka, Diane Di Prima, and Timothy Leary) are reunited at Naropa University in Boulder, CO during the late 1970's to share their works and influence a new generation of young American bohemians.
Captures the spirit and essence of the great San Francisco Human Be-In of January 14, 1967. Ten thousand people imbued with peace, love and euphoria. Set to hard rock such as only San Francisco blues can produce. BE-IN contains Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Timothy Leary, Michael McClure, Lenore Kandel and Buddha. Music by Blue Cheer.
The 1960's and 1970's were a time of change, a time of revolution, a time of the Hippies. Hippies reached across the nation and their effects are still felt today.
Provides an insider's view of the groundbreaking, outrageous, creative juggernaut that was the band Ministry - during their world tour - as front man Al Jourgensen slips into drug addiction. Ministry made industrial rock mainstream, and along the way their music and take no prisoners lifestyle influenced the leaders of today's most important bands, many of whom are in the film.
Icons of '60s counterculture, Harvard psychologists Timothy Leary and Ram Dass became estranged until an illness inspired their fascinating reunion.
Skydivers drop in on a suspicious quarry.
A 12-minute documentary about the house of RHCP guitarist John Frusciante. The film's main purpose was to depict the chaos & instability in his life.
Experimental movie, where a man comes home and experiences LSD. His kaleidoscopic visions follow, with readings inspired by the Tibethan Book of the Dead.
Stylistic documentary about the cyberpunk movement. William Gibson, author of cyberpunk classic Neuromancer, and Timothy Leary, famous advocate of psychedelic drugs, share their thoughts on the future of society and technology.
The proposed metaphysical highs of psychedelic drugs versus the harsh actualities of concrete metropolitan life. These two opposing realities form the backdrop of an adolescent encounter in the city of London, told through still images and written narration.
We live in a world where the powerful deceive us. We know they lie. They know we know they lie. They do not care. We say we care, but we do nothing, and nothing ever changes. It is normal. Welcome to the post-truth world. How we got to where we are now…
The title of this Canadian documentary may have some relation to Canadian Marshall McLuhan's theories. It combines interview with famous U.S. militants of the '60s, such as Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman, with reenactments of their Chicago trials (i.e., the "Chicago Eight," etc.). Other figures of cultural interest from the time, including Alan Ginsberg and Buckminster Fuller, are interviewed or featured. The filmmaker indicates his belief that powerful forces in the U.S. government worked together to suppress American radicals. This view, widely disbelieved at the time, has since been confirmed.
Back in the 1960's a former Harvard professor stopped giving A's, B's and C's and started handing out LSD. his name was Timothy Leary and he was at the center of a controversy in North America over the growing use of psychedelic drugs. Leary ran a research center in New York state where young people took 'acid' while he took notes. The media took notice.
LSD Guru Tim Leary teaches us all to die by dying himself in what he calls his "custom death". This documentary deals with Mr. Leary's last days, all captured on camera by his own request.
An audio-visual journey through the mind of Terence McKenna.
This video covers the Los Angeles Whole Life Expo, in which cultural leaders of importance to the New Age movement are interviewed and vendors promote wares.
Like The Men Who Make the Music, We're All Devo! has a storyline to tie the videos together. In it, the character of Rod Rooter (Michael W Schwartz) is reviewing Devo's music videos for Big Entertainment. Much to his chagrin, his daughter Donut Rooter (Laraine Newman) is a fan of the band. Donut discovers the videos after asking her father for money to get an abortion (though this is not explicitly stated). Two excerpts from the storyline were included in the "Complete Truth About De-Evolution" laserdisc and DVD (both out of sequence) but the rest is exclusive to this videocassette. "Theme from Doctor Detroit" was also not included, and is unique to this tape. (Wikipedia)
Three sailors are talked into trying LSD and marijuana--which, this film implies, are basically the same thing--and the effects of the drugs endanger the lives of their fellow sailors aboard ship.
About to be electrocuted for a catalog of heinous crimes, the unrepentant Horace Pinker transforms into a terrifying energy source. Only young athlete Jonathan Parker, with an uncanny connection to him through bizarre dreams, can fight the powerful demon.
Description by D.A Pennebaker: "This movie is something of a mystery. Timothy Leary was getting married to a model named Nena Von Schlebrugge up in Millbrook, New York at the Hitchcock house, where Leary had been carrying on his hallucinogenic revelries for the past year or so after leaving Harvard. It was rumored that this was going to be the wedding of the season, the wedding of Mr. And Mrs. Swing as Cab Calloway put it. Blackwood took me downtown to meet Monte Rock III who was singing at Trudy Heller’s but who was also a very pricey and off-the-wall hairdresser and was in fact going to be doing the bride’s hair. Nena’s brother, Bjorn, known as the “Baron” was a friend of the Hitchcock’s, as was I, and the idea of going along and filming the wedding seemed not unwarranted. I’ve always wanted to film someone getting married."
A Los Angeles detective teams up with a psychic to hunt down a serial killer.
5 psychedelic short films, broadcast on the French/German tv channel "arte" on 2007-07-16 "Be-In" USA 1967, 7 min "Beatles Electronique" USA 1966-69, 3 min "San Francisco" Great Britain 1967/68, 15 min. "Andy Warhol's Exploding Plastic Inevitable" USA/Great Britain 1967, 12 min. "Eyetoon" USA 1967/68, 8 min.
Filmmaker Alan Rudolph shows Watergate conspirator G. Gordon Liddy and hippie guru Timothy Leary, alone and together onstage.
Uncovering government agencies (especially the CIA) that secretly tested the effects of LSD on humans.
The year: 1969. Headlines blare war and civil unrest while John Lennon and Yoko Ono are in love. The eccentic rock 'n' roll couple has just gotten married, and more than happy to be together, they want to change the world. Lying in a hotel bed surrounded by journalists, they announce their mission for peace and invite the rest of the world to symbolically climb into bed with them and share their dream. People call them silly, naive, even ridiculous, yet one famous couple's bed-in spread new hope that there really could be an end to war, hate and violence. Here is rare footage from that amazing time, including footage from John and Yoko's wedding, the infamous bedside confrontation between John and conservative cartoonist Al Capp, Lennon debating media expert Marshall McLuhan, and meeting Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. Now twenty years after Lennon's murder, Yoko and others involved in the peace mission reflect on the events of that magical, mystical year.
A special documentary dealing with topics as narcotics, sex, promiscuity, fads, pop culture and morals in 1967.
"The whole film are non-art portraits of people in which they do what they want with this hat – and therefore, act or stand in front of my camera. It’s only love: therefore it can’t harm you". Joyce Wieland.
While recorded in the late 70s and early 80s, the theme to this Tom Snyder release is icons of the 1960s. Features Ken Kesey, the Grateful Dead, Dr. Timothy Leary, and Tom Wolfe as Guests The Dead play a short set of 'On the Road Again,' 'Dire Wolf,' 'Deep Elm Blues' and an abbreviated 'Cassidy.
Death of his wife's pet poodle and a threatening movie producer create a world of trouble for a middle-aged B-movie mogul. He hires two psychopathic goons to take care of it, which only creates more trouble and attracts the cops.
Starring Timothy Leary
Filmmaker Morley Markson shows Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, and other '60s rebels, then and now in a follow up to his 1971 film "Breathing Together: Revolution of the Electric Family."
The fascinating story of the cultural, social, spiritual, and musical revolution ignited by the coming of the Beatles. Tracing the impact that these four band members had, first in their native Britain and soon after worldwide, it reappraises the band and follows their path from young subversives to countercultural heroes. Featuring fresh, revealing interviews with key collaborators as well as a wealth of rarely-seen archival footage, this is a bold new take on the most significant band in the history of music and their enduring impact on popular culture.
Plant Explorer Richard Evans Schultes was a real life Indiana Jones whose discoveries of hallucinogenic plants laid the foundation for the psychedelic sixties. Now in this two hour History Channel TV Special, his former student Wade Davis, follows in his footsteps to experience the discoveries that Schultes brought to the western world. Shot around the planet, from Canada to the Amazon, we experience rarely seen native hallucinogenic ceremonies and find out the true events leading up to the Psychedelic Sixties. Featuring author/adventurer Wade Davis ("Serpent and the Rainbow"), Dr. Andrew Weil, the Grateful Dead's Bob Weir and many others, this program tells the story of the discovery of peyote, magic mushrooms and beyond: one man's little known quest to classify the Plants of the Gods. Richard Evans Schultes revolutionized science and spawned another revolution he never imagined.
Also known as Walden, Jonas Mekas’s first diary film is a six-reel chronicle of his life in 1960s New York, interweaving moments with family, friends, lovers, and artistic idols. Blending everyday encounters with portraits of the avant-garde art scene, it forms an epic, personal meditation on community, creativity, and the passage of time.
A film about Timothy Leary's life and death. Dr. Timothy Francis Leary (October 22, 1920 -- May 31, 1996) was an American writer, psychologist, futurist, and advocate of psychedelic drug research. An icon of 1960s counterculture, Leary is most famous as a proponent of the therapeutic, spiritual and emotional benefits of LSD. He coined and popularized the catch phrase "Turn on, tune in, drop out."
An examination of the notorious high priest of LSD Timothy Leary through the eyes of his famed lover Joanna Harcourt-Smith.
A retrospective of events in director Louis van Gasteren’s life from 1964 to 1969, filmed by him in that period and reflected on from his vantage point over 40 years later at the age of 90.
Ted is a 1970s Venice Beach poet who spends his days drifting along the boardwalk, reciting his poetry to anyone who will listen. His life changes when a bikini-clad beauty named Linda strolls by him. Instantly, Ted believes he's found his "Venus" and becomes obsessed with Linda. He tries to woo her with poetry, obscene phone calls and romantic overtures, all to disastrous effect.
A group of anarchists use their public-access TV show to satirize the government until a right-wing preacher attempts to shut them down.
John and Yoko in the presidential suite at the Hilton Amsterdam, which they had decorated with hand-drawn signs above their bed reading "Bed Peace." They invited the global press into their room to discuss peace for 12 hours every day.
In May 1969 John Lennon and Yoko Ono held their famous Bed-In For Peace event. It was attended by many of their close friends, including Timothy Leary. This is a record of the event. Part of the cycle of The First 40.
John C. Lilly is the inventor of the isolation tank, as well as pioneer of studies in dolphin intelligence and support of psychedelics as a positive means for expanding consciousness. The storytelling will be supported by interviews with Lilly’s contemporaries and colleagues, as well as extensive archival records.
Conceived as an electronic road movie, this documentary investigates cutting edge technologies and their influence on our culture as we approach the 21st century. It takes off from the idea that mankind's effort to tap the power of Nature has been so successful that a new world is suddenly emerging,an artificial reality. Virtual Reality, digital and biotechnology, plastic surgery and mood-altering drugs promise seemingly unlimited powers to our bodies, and our selves. This film presents the implications of having access to such power as we all scramble to inhabit our latest science fictions.
Davis meets Zina in a car wreck. Their immediate attraction for one another is put into jeopardy when they learn each is competing for the same writing job.
An exploration of the seminal and transformative 18 months that one of music’s most famous couples — John Lennon and Yoko Ono — spent living in Greenwich Village, New York City, in the early 1970s.
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 rookie detective and a drug-addicted archivist investigating unsolved murders from the past. An AI-animated cocaine rat assists them in unraveling these bizarre cold cases within a modern LAPD precinct setting.
Journalizing his final year before dying of cancer in May 1996, this documentary takes a sentimental walk down memory-lane to honor a man whose place in history is surely guaranteed. Probably best known for his oft-quoted (and misunderstood) 1960s phrase wherein Dr.Leary encouraged everyone to "turn on, tune in and drop out", the filmmakers sought to capture the real man behind the legend; vox-pops with friends, colleges and family pepper the storyline that made-up the multi-faceted man who was author, psychologist, teacher, guru, fugitive-from-justice and dignified humorist. We see him in his experimental 1960s, the hippie 70s, his thoughtful 80s and the futuristic 90s. Overall a very satisfying documentary about this extraordinary man. Ever the Professor, we see his musings on life & death and, after succumbing to the inevitable, we witness the (somewhat macabre) after-death cryogenic storage of his severed head for his optimistic, future generations to do with what they may.