Thursday, April 24, 2014

A Course in Meta-Movieology



MetaIntegral Academy is excited to offer you a new 8-week course created and facilitated by Mark Allan Kaplan. It's called Meta-Movieology and it starts next month. If you are a movie enthusiast and into integral and evolutionary approaches to personal growth and development, this course is for you!

Register today.

Meta-Movieology I

An 8-Week Course in Using Movies to More Deeply Understand and Fully Embody an Integral and Evolutionary Perspective

PUT DOWN THE BOOKS, PICK UP THE POPCORN 
AND ENTER THE WORLD OF EVOLUTIONARY ENLIGHTENTAINMENT

From: May 15, 2014 (Thursday)
To: July 6, 2014 (Sunday)


What Is It?
Meta-Movieology is a groundbreaking meta-approach to learning Integral Theory through a transformative moving image viewing practice. In this course you will develop a deeper and more visceral understanding of the basic elements of the Integral approach by using the aesthetic and multisensory power of the moving image for embodied learning and evolutionary growth.

Location:
This event takes place online.

DETAILS:

The moving image in all its evolving forms has a unique capacity for affecting multiple aspects of our being. Movies can make us think and feel deeply; they can give us new perspectives on self, other and world; they can immerse us in other worlds and give us rich and deep embodied experiences. In fact, recent research has revealed that immersive and virtual moving image experiences can actually produce the same neurological and biological responses in our brains and bodies as actual lived experiences.

Over the last several years Mark Allan Kaplan has discovered a profound and fun approach to using the power of movies to help us see, feel, and viscerally experience the integral and evolutionary perspective. This approach includes special viewing practices to help us experientially observe Integral frameworks within any moving image work and extend the profound theoretical concepts and perspectives of the Integral-evolutionary approach from the mind into our emotional and energetic bodies. These experiential perspective-taking exercises help us make the abstract concrete and make it easier for us to extend these perspectives into our everyday lives.

This course is for anyone interested in Integral Theory, for those interested in the transformative power of the moving image, and for anyone who loves movies and is interested in their own personal growth and development. For those unfamiliar with Integral Theory it will offer a simple, powerful, and intuitive way into the integral-evolutionary perspective.  For those already familiar with the Integral model, this is a wonderful opportunity to revisit and viscerally deepen your understanding of integral theory and see and feel how it can be applied to just about any interest, activity, or pursuit that you may have. For those who are interested in their own personal growth and development and love movies, either as a viewer or creator, this work will give you a deeper appreciation and understanding for the medium, along with a greater capacity to use it for healing and growth of self, other and world.

Join Mark for this introductory course, which explores how the six basic Integrally-informed lenses of holons, quadrants, levels, lines, states and types can be utilized as powerful transformational practices for using any moving image work, from movies to video games, for your own evolutionary growth and development. This course will be taught through 8 weekly 2-hour conference calls (recordings for the calls will be posted for participants who are not able to join a call). The first week you will be introduced to Meta-Movieology in general. Each of the subsequent 6 weeks will be devoted to a single Meta-Movieology lens and practice. The final week will be a reflection and wrap up week. Each week Mark will assign practices for you to do that week using that week’s lens. There will also be weekly readings and movie viewing assignments, along with online threaded discussions to connect with fellow participants and deepen your understanding of this work. Don’t miss this exciting opportunity – Integral Theory and the movies will never look or feel the same.

Dates: 8 weeks: May 15th – July 6th

Cost: $345.00 USD plus $12.50 handling fee (includes a free download of the Meta-Movieology meditation video “The Pond”)

Number of Participants: Up to 20

Instructor: Mark Allan Kaplan, Ph.D.

Weekly Conference Calls:  Thursdays 1-3pm Pacific Time

May 15 – Week 1: Introduction
May 22 – Week 2: The HOLONIC Sense
May 29 – Week 3: I Heart QUADRANTS
June 5 – Week 4: LEVELS of a Groundhog's Day
June 12 – Week 5: The Imaginarium of Developmental LINES
June 19 – Week 6: Altered STATES
June 26 – Week 7: TYPOLOGY Code
July 3 – Week 8: Conclusion

Weekly Movie Viewing Assignments:*

Week 2: "The Sixth Sense" (1999)
Week 3: "I Heart Huckabees" (2004)
Week 4: "Groundhog Day" (1993)
Week 5: "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus" (2009)
Week 6: "Altered States" (1980)
Week 7: "Source Code" (2011)

*Participants will be required to either rent or buy the movies listed as Weekly Movie Viewing Assignments. All other materials will be supplied by the instructor.

PRESENTERS

Mark Allan Kaplan, Ph.D. is an independent award-winning filmmaker and the pre-eminent theorist and practitioner of the application of Integral Theory to the cinematic arts.  Mark has a B.A. in Motion Picture and Television Production from the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts, an M.F.A. in Motion Picture Directing from the American Film Institute, M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Psychology from the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, and a Certificate in Integral Studies from Fielding Graduate University. He has worked professionally in the entertainment industry as a producer, writer, director, editor, researcher, and consultant. Mark’s creative works have been shown on television, in theaters, schools, and colleges, and at film festivals and expositions around the world. He has also conducted seminal research in Integral, transpersonal, transformative, and transdisciplinary approaches to film, video, and multimedia at Interval Research Corporation, the University of Chicago, the University of Illinois at Chicago, and as founder and lead researcher of the Integral Cinema Project, an independent research, production, and educational initiative sponsored by the San Francisco Film Society. Mark received Integral Institute's 2008 Integral Life Award in recognition of his continuing groundbreaking research into the application of Integral Theory to cinematic media theory and practice.

“Mark’s work is the first mature application of Integral Theory to any domain of art.” 
– Sean Esbjörn-Hargens, Ph.D. (Founding CEO of MetaIntegral)

“Mark is the pre-eminent theorist and practitioner of integral cinema and his work represents one of the most advanced and profound meta-theory’s of art and media to date.” 
– Michael Schwartz, Ph.D. (Professor of History and Philosophy of Art, Georgia Regents University)

“Mark’s passionate quest to explore the further reaches of film and media theory and practice is inspiring and holds great promise.”
– Jean Picker Firstenberg (President Emeritus, American Film Institute)

Click here to register - join Mark and other integralists, evolutionaries, and movie enthusiasts in this enlightening and entertaining course!


Thursday, April 10, 2014

Announcing the Publication of "Integral Cinematic Analysis: Mapping the Multiple Dimensions of the Cinema and the Co-Evolution of Cinema, Consciousness, Culture, and Society"



The journal article "Integral Cinematic Analysis: Mapping the Multiple Dimensions of the Cinema and the Co-Evolution of Cinema, Consciousness, Culture, and Society" has just been published in the Journal of Integral Theory and Practice. Winner of the Complex Thought Engagement Award at the 2013 Integral Theory Conference. Available at: https://foundation.metaintegral.org/products/integral-cinematic-analysis.

ABSTRACT

This article provides an introduction to the application of integral and transdisciplinary approaches to cinematic media theoretical analysis. The theories and works of Jean Gebser, Edgar Morin, and Ken Wilber are used to potentially integrate major cinematic theoretical and analytical approaches into a comprehensive meta-approach that covers the objective, subjective, intersubjective, and interobjective dimensions of the cinematic arts. Specific integrally informed lenses of cinematic analysis are introduced as part of this meta-approach, based on Gebser’s perspectival structures, Morin’s cinematic complexity, and Wilber’s Integral framework. Potential benefits for the meta-approach are presented, including a deeper and more expansive understanding of the complex interrelatedness of the experience, form, language, and context of cinematic works, collective works of individual cinematic artists, genres and styles, and collective movements within the medium, along with the evolution of the cinematic medium itself and its relationship with the evolution of individual and collective consciousness, culture, and society. 


Thursday, April 3, 2014

The Integral Cinema Project is one of 11 Finalists in the 2014 MetaIntegral Projects in Action Grant Series (DONATE AND VOTE)


The Integral Cinema Project's MIRACLE OF WE (A Kosmic Love Story) is one of 11 finalists in the 2014 MetaIntegral Foundation's Projects in Action grant series.


THE MIRACLE OF WE (A Kosmic Love Story) is an integrally-informed interactive narrative short video by the Integral Cinema Project and integral cinematic artist-scholar Mark Allan Kaplan.

THE MIRACLE OF WE will attempt to tap into the capacity of the moving image to produce real-world transformation by creating a powerful and engaging short video to help foster the emergence of integral philosophy and culture on a potentially global scale. Using a traditional narrative structure as its foundational through-line in the form of a fictional love story, we will follow two strangers from their first meeting, through their courtship, and to their first kiss, unpacking their journey with various Integral lenses to reveal the rich and staggering complexity of the numerous dimension-perspectives, development structures, states, and typological patterns within, between, and around us that makes our capacity to transcend and include all this and connect with each other a truly miraculous occurrence. Integrated within and around this integrally-informed narrative will be abstract, experimental, meditative, and documentary elements that will include vignettes of other relationships representing the myriad of dimension-perspectives of self, culture and world, along with informational and experiential explorations of the Integral perspective itself. Through live action, stock imagery, animation, and interactive elements, THE MIRACLE OF WE will interweave all these elements into a hybrid dramatic, comedic, inspirational, contemplative, and sensual work with the intention to create an entertaining and transformational visceral experience of the integral perspective in the form of a potentially globally-viral interactive video.

Lead creator of THE MIRACLE OF WE, Mark Allan Kaplan, an independent award-winning filmmaker and the preeminent theorist-practitioner of the application of Integral Theory to the cinematic arts, will attempt to break new ground with this work by applying Integrally-informed methods and practices that he has developed over the past several years to the design and execution of this production, including the application of Integrally-informed approaches to narrative, visual, sound, and editorial design, and to pre-production, production, postproduction, and distribution practices. This approach includes the application of Integral practices by all members of the cast and crew to help facilitate an integrally-informed creative field and assist in putting Integral principles into practice to support the transformational intent of the creative work and the potential transformation for creative team members as well.


Donate and Vote for THE MIRACLE OF WE (A Kosmic Love Story) and for the other great projects up for funding and support at https://secure.qgiv.com/for/pow/