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. 

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/

"The Pond" Meditation Video Now Available Online for Video on Demand

Experience the audiovisual transformative experience of THE POND now available to rent online Video-on-Demand at Amazon:

THE POND

THE POND is a short video meditation for relaxation, personal growth and transformation. Transformative approaches to audiovisual expression are used to capture the presence and atmosphere of the natural environment of a pond and the state of consciousness one can acquire when meditating in this environment. The gentle movement and presence of swimming fish and the interplay of earth, water and light, combine to create a healing and calming energy, while subtle shifts in perspective and consciousness-altering audiovisual elements help stimulate the expansion of both inner and outer awareness.

"The Pond" Meditation Video Now on DVD

Experience the full audiovisual transformative experience of THE POND now on DVD at Amazon:

THE POND DVD

THE POND is a short video meditation for relaxation, personal growth and transformation. Transformative approaches to audiovisual expression are used to capture the presence and atmosphere of the natural environment of a pond and the state of consciousness one can acquire when meditating in this environment. The gentle movement and presence of swimming fish and the interplay of earth, water and light, combine to create a healing and calming energy, while subtle shifts in perspective and consciousness-altering audiovisual elements help stimulate the expansion of both inner and outer awareness.

"The Pond" Selected for Screening at the Hygienic Art Gallery Screening Room 21 Film Festival

"The Pond" was selected for screening at the upcoming Hygienic Art Gallery Screening Room 21 Film Festival in New London, Connecticut on January 24th, 2014. Screening Room 21 is New London’s premier indie film festival features works from both emerging and established filmmakers.

For more on information visit:
The Hygienic Art Gallery Website
Screening Room 21 Event Page
Screening Room 21 Facebook Event Page

Announcing the Online Exhibition of "The Pond" on the Integral Life Art Gallery

This month Integral Life Art Gallery offers their first presentation of video art. The first gallery in this medium is from Mark Allan Kaplan, the pre-eminent theorist and practitioner of integral cinema, who has produced on Integral Life a remarkable series of articles titled “Integral Cinema Studio.” For the gallery this month he offers us a work of Integral video art — this designation not simply about the kinds of technological device used (here a mini-DV camera) but also about the work’s tacit referencing of modes of display that are not centered in movie theatres, as well as its length (5 minutes) and contemplative-meditative mode of artistic expression. The piece is titled THE POND and dates from 2002.

Kaplan’s video draws knowingly on the sundry lineages of moving images (mass media cinema, experimental film, artistic-exhibition), essayed into affecting in the viewer a series of shifts in consciousness. As the artist reports, he entered into meditative states in both the shooting and the editing of the video. In its gorgeous poetically integrative form, many of the frames approaching the beauty of standalone photographic art, as well as the modes of consciousness it evokes, we are privy to a shining instance of integral video art.

In the artist's own words:

As a cinematic/video artist I see myself as a creative inquirer, exploring the potentials of the medium to effect growth and transformation, and attempting to push the medium’s own evolutionary boundaries. My recent video work has focused on explorations of the potential effects that a video artist’s consciousness can have on a video art work; the potential capacity of the medium to communicate that consciousness; and the capacity of the medium to capture and express individual and collective sentient presence, human and other species, along with objective and atmospheric presence or the felt-sense of being in the presence of certain physical objects and within various physical environments.

In THE POND I used Integral transformative practices before, during, and after all aspects of the creative process, exploring if and how an Integrally-informed state of creation consciousness would affect the creative process and work. During the filming of THE POND this Integrally-informed state appeared to give me the ability to alternately and simultaneously hold the awareness of the individual and collective sentient presence of the koi fish swimming in the pond and the physical and environmental realities of the pond itself. This Integrally-informed creation state also seemed to give me the capacity to transcend and include my awareness of my own body, consciousness and the creative technology and become an Integrally-informed mirror for these multiple dimension-perspectives. As I continued using this creation state through the post-production process I felt a force within my own being and within the material itself guiding me toward my goal of attempting to translate and share this deep and transformative Integrally-informed lived-experience of THE POND.

Mark Allan Kaplan

Edgar Morin on the Cinema's Effects on the Individual and Collective

The complex connection and communication between creator, cinematic work, viewer, and world is deeply explored by Edgar Morin, whose complexity approach to the cinematic medium holds the potential for offering us a way to more fully analyze and understand this complex interconnectedness.

"By means of the cinema, in their own likeness, our dreams are projected and objectified. They are industrially fabricated, collectively shared. They come back upon our waking life to mold it, to teach us how to live or not to live. We reabsorb them, socialized, useful, or else they lose themselves in us, we lose ourselves in them. There they are stored ectoplasms, astral bodies that feed off our persons and feed us, archives of soul." - Edgar Morin (in The Cinema, or the Imaginary in Man)