ENGTANGLED MINDS
feature documentary in progress
Four people guide us along their paths to self-healing, opening a portal to cultural practices that shift consciousness and offer hope for the intractable pain of our times.
A propulsive, somatic opening signals an immersive experience ahead: Isabel García turns to a Mazatec healer in Mexico’s Sierra Mazateca, working with sacred mushrooms to release her emotional anguish. Under hypnosis, Bhargav Lenka learns to accesses deep layers of his unconscious mind as a resource against chronic pain from a life-altering car accident in India. LePoleon Williams crafts African instruments in his Florida carport and plays trance-inducing rhythms that ease his post-traumatic anxiety. In a spa in New Hampshire, Christina Nice floats in a tub of highly salted water, entering a dreamlike state that soothes shooting leg pains from Lyme disease.
Drawing on her identity as a biracial, multilingual filmmaker, Julie Mallozzi weaves a rich tapestry of these culturally distinct altered-state practices. A final thread offers a meditative throughline connecting the protagonists’ experience: from a temple in Massachusetts, Buddhist nuns chant rhythmically in Cantonese, offering insights earned through deep meditation. Their presence echoes across each journey, illuminating how ancient wisdom can connect us to a shared consciousness in the pursuit of healing from within.
“The tone itself has an energy and a power – you can feel it dissipating by using your state of mind to control that energy.”
“Your unconscious mind can also be a tremendous resource to you... how is it going to serve you today?"
“Usually our heart is very entangled, and that’s why we can't yield wisdom. With your mind settled you slowly make out what’s buried underneath.”
“I felt my arm fall off, and then suddenly it went back to normal. Something huge appeared in my mind, that I stumbled over. Later, I realized it was my stomach.”
“I saw myself buried in a grave... When I came out of the grave, I had no leg pain.”
Artistic Approach
This film takes viewers on an immersive cinematic journey into four characters’ unconscious minds – and perhaps deeper into their own minds. Beautiful imagery and a textured 5.1 sound design weave a complex web from several 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, Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Provostial Fund for the Arts and Humanities at Harvard University, the Film Study Center at Harvard, and Proyecto teonanácatl.
How you can help
This film is currently at the fine 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.