IMDb Integral Movie and TV List 2020 Updates

 

The following are all the movies and television and streaming series that were tested and added to the Integral Movie and TV List on IMDb in 2020 (listed chronologically by release date):

It's a Wonderful Life (1947) - This Frank Capra Christmas classic is also an early stage integral work that maps how the main character George Bailey (James Stewart) evolves from egocentric to Kosmocentric circles of care and concern in a way that shows us how we can evolve through various stages while also holding onto earlier stage drives and projections. In George's case he holds onto his childhood egoic dream of being a world explorer and doing great and big things, all the while not realizing that he was already doing great and big things as he developed throughout his life. A beautiful journey that teaches us that it is often the little things we do in life that end up having the biggest impact in the long run.  The film is also told directly from the Kosmocentric witness perspective from the angels watching over him beyond the dimension of the world of form.

Miracle on 34th Street (1947) - The quintessential Santa Claus movie of all time, this Christmas classic is perhaps the most magical Santa movie ever and yet it shows no magic directly. The miracles that Santa brings are miracles of consciousness. He is operating at a higher more integral level than everyone else and is able to see how they are trapped in their worldviews and constructs and he gently awakens them to higher dimensions of being and becoming. He is also very human in many ways, sometimes losing his faith that he can save Christmas, which only adds great depth to the wonderful performance by Edmund Gwenn. At the end we get a hint that this man may indeed be Santa Claus, but we are left with only a sense of standing at the edge of a great Kosmic mystery.   

Rashomon (1950) - Profound cinematic masterpiece that puts the viewer in the integral witnessing state of being as the film deconstructs relativism and deconstructionism itself, making the pluralistic structure an object of our awareness and thus helping us to transcend it.

8 1/2 (1963) - Master Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini's semi-autobiographical cinematic masterpiece is actually a deep integrally-informed exploration of the artists struggle to tap into and be a channel for the creative force of the universe. Fellini's main character is a famous filmmaker who is in preproduction of  a film while being unable to access that creative force. His dreams help him seek for it in the past, in waking life the dreams bleed through and take him on a surreal creative journey to gaining that Kosmocentric witness perspective that feeds the artist's soul. 

Local Hero (1983) - A magical little integrally-informed off-beat comedy that gradually has us feeling that everything we are seeing in this cinematic reality is at the edge of a vast conscious mystery, giving us a gentle and subtle taste of the Kosmocentric realities beyond the veil of what is known. This veil includes the separation between the manmade world we live in and the natural world we are cut off from as well as the great mystery beyond the stars.  Amidst all this, our main character evolves from egocentric to the early beginnings of  Kosmocentric circles of care and concern in an almost imperceptible way. Everything here is just below and beyond the surface, just beyond our grasp.

Field of Dreams (1989) - This magical film classic explores the healing of shadow material for individuals at various stages of development as they come in contact with the transcendent reality of the Field of Dreams itself. Through this journey we are taken to the edge of what can be known and hints at what is beyond, giving us a taste of the Kosmocentric Integral Witness.

I.Q. (1994) - A sweet little integrally informed romantic comedy that explores Einstein's famous idea that God does not play dice with the universe and applies it to love. The characters and the story subtly  dance  between our reality and hints of that greater force behind it. This wondrous lightness around such deep and heavy concepts produces a beautiful and sweet and silly Kosmo-centric journey.

50 First Dates (2004) - An evolutionary time-loop Kosmic love story where the narrative actually takes us through different circles of care and concern as the main character evolves through them. So we first start with the world as it evolves around him and his ego...then to a connection with another person, his love interest...who is stuck in her own personal 24 hour time-loop…then to her family...then to the greater community (the others at the brain institute) and finally the world at the end when he takes everyone with him as he does research for the planet and humanity itself. Pretty simple and fun movie that is at its heart essentially integral.

Eli Stone (2008): A funny, profound, deep and light integrally-informed series explores the neurological boundaries between brain and consciousness, between spirit and science, and between madness and mysticism. Eli Stone is also a hybrid genre work that beautifully integrates comedy, drama, and musical forms into a wondrously mystical legal procedural show. In the end this magical yet grounded work climaxes with a deep visceral existential experience of transcending the age old question between fate and free will by revealing a beautiful synergy between them.

Atlanta (2016) - An Integrally-informed series that finds hilarity in the absurd while unpacking the core traumas of being black in America. Creator & star Donald Glover (whose alter-ego Childish Gambino scored with the breakout hit This is America) plays Earn, a young Princeton dropout from a low-income neighborhood who begins to manage his cousin, a locally-famous rapper on the verge of breaking big. Atlanta unpacks how race intersects with every domain of society -- from the personal and interpersonal to the social and systemic -- and does so with a metamodern tone of plangent, loopy surreality.

Kevin (Probably) Saves the World (2017) - Fun off-beat comedy TV series with the main character Keven kicking and screaming his way through an integrally-informed transcendent education process. This process forces him to evolve through multiple stages of development on his way to fulfilling his destiny of saving the world…maybe… 

WeRiseUP (2019) - Well-made conscious documentary seeks to empower us to rise to the great challenges we face as a species and meet this moment in history with deep passion. WeRiseUP goes deeper and more expansive than normal works in this genre by anchoring it in an integral framework.

Messiah (2020) - This complex and layered integrally-informed Netflix series unpacks the interrelationship of religion, consciousness, culture and society. This brilliant series seems to be consciously designed to bring more expansive awareness to viewers cross-culturally.

Star Trek: Picard (2020) - The sixth spin-off streaming series in the integrally-informed Star Trek universe is a sequel to the popular Next Generation series and feature films that finds an aging Captain Picard coming out of retirement for one last grand adventure that seeks to complete haunting unanswered questions and story arcs from the Next Generation storyworld. 

Homemade (2020) - This Netflix short film series stitches together a bunch of shorts made by a crop of talented international filmmakers making films in and about quarantine. Together these shorts create a mosaic experience of the pandemic across the globe that gives us a sense of a bigger picture just beyond our reach. Truly beautiful, profound and deeply resonant and inspiring...and operating at the frothy edge of a new form of integrally-informed conscious media.

Palm Springs (2020) - An integrally-informed "Groundhog Day" evolutionary time-loop romantic comedy with two…or even three…or more…characters caught in a time-loop that is helping them all heal and evolve.

Tenet (2020) - Christopher Nolan's mind-bending time-twisting groundbreaking integral temporal cinematic work. Part spy movie, time-travel thriller where the future is at war with the present. Bullets going backwards and forward, people die in one time and come back to life in another, people in the past die in the future while people from the future die in the past. A truly wild temporal ride with the protagonist evolving through all the stages of development both in time and all at once. This film also has perhaps the cinema's first temporal war battle scene and becomes a visceral cinematic training in temporal field awareness.

Soul (2020) - A deeply moving, uplifting and transformative Pixar journey into the nature of human existence and the human soul. The main character evolves from an egocentric lost soul unable to see his relationships and the world around him beyond how they either help or hinder the fulfillment of his dreams of success to a Kosmocentric inspired soul, ultimately recognizing the depth and impact of his relationship with others and the world and the full transcendental beauty of all of existence itself. A journey deep into what it means to be human and what it means to be truly alive in all dimensions of sentient beingness.

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The above movies and series have integrally-informed elements to varying degrees according to testing criteria developed during research on the application of Integral Theory to cinematic media theory and practice. According to this research, a cinematic work is deemed to be integral if elements of the integral stage of development are represented in the cinematic form, style, structure, content, and/or are embedded in the material as a presence or atmosphere. These representations of the elements of the integral stage of development can include:

• The exploration and integration of multiple evolving dimensions and perspectives of lesser and greater depth and span;
• The concretion of abstract and interior dimensions and perspectives, such as time and interiority, in the service of evolutionary growth and development;
• An evolutionary story, event, and/or character progression that is given greater than or equal emphasis to conflict resolution, with progression developing vertically through at least three stages or levels of development;
• The evolutionary impulse as a driving force or causality pattern;
• The valuing of truth that is qualified by evolving perspectival fields;
• And/or a Kosmo-centric circle of care and concern that suggests an awareness, integration, and embracing of all of existence. 

It should also be noted that the above works have been tested for having integral elements to ANY degree, which means some of these works have more of these elements than other works on the list. In addition, just because a cinematic work has integral elements does not automatically indicate its quality, though it will have elements of a more expansive worldview to some degree.

Integral Holiday Movies to Warm the Heart and Stir the Soul (and the Evolutionary Impulse)

This  holiday season finds the world still reeling from the pandemic amidst major polarization and conflict between ideological perspectives. The limits on our social interactions have amplified the psycho-dynamic separation and tensions of the growing ideological divide distancing us from each other mentally, emotionally and sometimes even spiritually. Many of us are seeking new ways to celebrate the holidays that honor and respond to the present moment.

I myself have been feeling a need to find solace in the holiday season spirit while also wanting to keep a clear head about the world situation. How can we combine the holiday light with a dive into the shadows of the great challenges ahead? One way I found is by watching integrally-informed holiday movies that attempt to both warm the heart and stir the soul, or -- from the integral perspective -- stir the evolutionary impulse within us by working with our shadow material. 

Below are a few classic and newer Christmas-oriented films that can help us do just that. What connects these works is their integration of an evolutionary perspective into their cinematic realities. Their characters face challenges and have to find ways to grow and evolve through them, all the while learning deep lessons on facing their shadowy fears, healing their buried wounds and pushing through the barriers of their comfort zones. Of course they all have happy endings, but these happy endings are earned by a revelation of the heart and mind, and not solely by the resolution of a conflict. This holiday season, we can watch these with an awareness of their potential use as a form of media-assisted shadow work and bring our attention to these underlying dynamics and reflect on similar patterns in our own lives.

Christmas Classics

This year I discovered that two of the most highly regarded holiday classics of all time are integrally-informed: Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) and the quintessential Santa movie Miracle on 34th Street (1947). 

It's a Wonderful Life (1946)

This Frank Capra Christmas classic is an early stage integral work that maps how the main character George Bailey (James Stewart) evolves from egocentric to Kosmocentric circles of care and concern. The film shows us how we can evolve through various stages while also holding onto earlier stage drives and projections. In George's case he holds onto his childhood egoic dream of being a world explorer who does great things, all the while not realizing that he was already doing great things as he developed throughout his life. The film’s beautiful journey teaches us that it is often the little things we do in life that end up having the biggest impact in the long run. The film is also told directly from the Kosmocentric witness perspective, that of the angels watching over George beyond the dimension of the world of form (Currently available on Amazon Prime, Google Play, iTunes and YouTube).

Miracle on 34th Street (1947)

The quintessential Christmas movie, this classic is perhaps the most magical Santa Claus movie ever and yet it shows no magic directly. The miracles Santa brings are miracles of consciousness. He is operating at a higher and more integral level than everyone else and is able to see how they are trapped in their worldviews and constructs. He gently (and sometimes not so gently) awakens them to higher dimensions of being and becoming. He is also very human in many ways, sometimes losing his faith that he can save Christmas, which only adds great depth to the wonderful performance by Edmund Gwenn. Although we end with a hint this man may indeed be Santa Claus, we are left with only a sense of standing at the edge of a great Kosmic mystery (Currently available on Amazon Prime, Disney+, Google Play, iTunes and YouTube).

During the last couple of years I uncovered two more recent integrally-informed holiday works, both TV movies: Dear Santa (2011) from Lifetime and 12 Dates of Christmas (2011) from Freeform. 

12 Dates of Christmas (2011 TV Movie)

A sweet and sappy Christmas movie that uses the integrally-informed evolutionary time loop formula from Groundhog Day with a Christmas spin and a female main character. 12 Dates is a cute little movie filled with holiday spirit, light on the outside with deep evolutionary patterns on the inside as the main character grows, heals and evolves through several stages of development (Currently available on Amazon Prime, Disney+, Freeform, Hulu and iTunes).

Dear Santa (2011 TV Movie)

Another sweet and sappy Christmas movie that follows a female character through her evolution during one holiday season. Our main character is swept into a period of accelerated development when a little girl's letter to Santa appears to magically find its way into her hands. The letter sends her on an emotional journey that helps her evolve from an egocentric spoiled and ditzy rich girl to a more mature woman whose circle of care and concern has expanded to include all of humanity (Currently available on Amazon Prime, iTunes and YouTube).

Extending my search beyond individual movies, I have been researching the entire genre of holiday movies, in particular Hallmark Movies, and mapping their structures of consciousness patterns to see why these genres are so successful across religious, cultural and political boundaries. 

Hallmark Movie Genre

Holiday movies in general owe their roots in many ways to the two integral holiday classics we examined above, It’s a Wonderful Life and Miracle on 34th Street. The Hallmark movie genre includes the holiday movie genre but also other types of family-friendly works. These include its classic Hallmark Hall of Fame for its highest quality more literary works. They also include its Hallmark Channel original movies, which cycle through seasons of celebration and romance with a yearly slate of movies focusing on Christmas, Hanukkah, Valentines Day, Easter, Passover, wedding season, and special seasonal love stories for winter, spring, summer and fall. Hallmark also has a mystery channel which adds the “solving a mystery” twist to their genre patterns. This genre is so successful it is being copied by other channels and services including Netflix, Amazon Prime, Lifetime, Freeform and UP TV. All told, hundreds of these movies have been produced over the years, and in recent years around 30 to 40 are released each year.

What I have learned from analyzing all these works is that the Hallmark movie genre in particular is in many ways integrative. It seeks to integrate traditional, modern and postmodern worldviews and values. It works to transcend the polarities we see in the world around us right now. 

The Hallmark holiday movie universe, for instance, is a world where political ideologies are mostly transcended, showing us a world in which conservative, traditional, liberal and progressive values can co-exist and actually support each other. So rural and small town America becomes the symbol of family and traditions that ground us. The city is where we go to find our dreams, search for ourselves and learn valuable life lessons. But in the end we can only truly find our true selves and live our dreams when we return home after all our seeking and find everything we were seeking inside ourselves...with the help of family and friends and sometimes even otherworldly forces. Sometimes these stories even transcend the rural/city divide by having a story take place solely in one environment but represent the traditional-progressive integration values within subcultural patterns. 

In this cinematic universe most of the stories are love stories, and they tend to focus on a strong female lead. Both men and women (and more recently of different races, faiths and gender identities) are seen as being able to have it all once they realize that the achievement of worldly goals is not truly valuable unless it is human centered and human grounded. 

(Hallmark movies are available online on Hallmark Now streaming service with a 7 day free trial)

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Whether we just watch the classics or dive deep into the feel-good movie ocean, with these movies we have the potential to lift our hearts and spirits while reflecting our own inner and outer challenges. We can consciously use these works as a mirror for our own challenges, and as a way of facing and working through that which has wounded us and been buried in the shadows of the unconscious. We can even get a taste of a possible future where the cultural divide no longer exists, a place of “peace on earth and goodwill to all.”

And if you wish to go deeper into media-assisted shadow work 

during this holiday season, 

join us on Sunday December 20th at 12 noon PST 

for our FREE virtual discussion on 

Shadow Work in the Mediasphere - Xmas Edition 

as part of our monthly Media Shaman Studio series.

 

Shadow Work in the Mediasphere - Xmas Edition!

This December finds us in a very strange liminal moment amidst the ongoing inflection point surrounding the US presidential election. That the election process remains unresolved is just one of the major challenges and tensions between polarized political, ideological and cultural fields, both locally and globally. Meanwhile, the holiday season is upon us and the traditional patterns of connection and celebration are in flux because of the global pandemic. 

After so many months of social isolation and heightened cultural polarization, the holiday season has the potential to create many more stresses and traumatic experiences than what is normally experienced during this time. For many of us the past four years have already been very traumatizing, and much of the world has shared a collective trauma around the pandemic for most of the past year. These traumas can be seen as our individual and collective shadows, because they get buried in the darkness of our unconscious and then profoundly affect our behavior as individuals, groups, cultures and societies. 

This process can be likened to the way the tides beneath the surface of the ocean can remain unseen but nevertheless affect the entire oceanic environment in profoundly powerful ways.

Many of us feel called to work with not only our own personal traumas, but also those of the culture and society as well. Media has a critical role to play in helping us to process these traumas because media acts as a mirror for our consciousness. Our individual and collective shadows are reflected in the shadows of the cinema, the shadows of the internet, and the shadows of the entire mediasphere. All of these combined make up the collective shadow of our collective self.

The mediasphere is deeply intertwined with this whole process as our source of collective information and expression. Through all our various media streams we receive, share and create information between each other, within and between our reality bubbles. Every new tweet, post, video and podcast has the potential to trigger new awarenesses -- or reinforce old biases. They can affirm our constructs of self, others and the world -- or challenge them. Overall, they reflect our individual and collective shadows, all at breakneck pace across multiple domains of our everyday existence. 

Old norms are collapsing all around us, as polarization separates us from each other and distorts our perceptions. For many of us the world has become unstable and our sense of security and safety has been profoundly undermined.

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For this month's Media Shaman Studio we will be exploring how we can use media to work with both our own personal shadow and the collective shadow, and how to understand and address the collective shadow that’s reflected in the mediasphere. This will include how to discern our individual and collective shadow material using individual media works and the collective mediasphere as mirrors for discernment. We will also explore some media-assisted shadow work practices in the creation, reception and sharing of media processes. Finally, we will try to identify various types of media content that can help us at this moment in our lives. 

And, of course, for this holiday season we will be exploring how Christmas films can often put shadow work into the frame of a modern fairy tale, which enables them to tackle difficult themes with a certain detachment and a sense of optimism and hope.

Be sure to join us for our live discussion on Sunday December 20th at 12pm PT

Media Shaman Studio is a monthly in-depth public lecture and discussion series on the relationship between consciousness and media with host and facilitator, Mark Allan Kaplan, Ph.D and Jonathan Steigman. This series is offered for free and is open to all members of the Conscious Good Creators Network, the general public, and participants in our Media Shaman courses.

 

State of the Mediasphere - November 2020

Featured Topic: The State of the Mediasphere - November 2020

Virtual Discussion date: Sunday, November 15th, 2020 at 12 p.m. PT

The mediasphere is the collective ecology of the world's media. The mediasphere includes social and streaming media along with all dimensions of the Internet including the Dark, Deep and Surface web. It also encompasses interactive and immersive media like video games and VR, as well as more traditional media such as newspapers, journals, television, movies, radio, books, novels, advertising, press releases and publicity.

Join us this month for a special Media Shaman Studio series event with an exploration of the state of the mediasphere during this major transformative moment in human history. With the US election and various other similar challenge points happening at this time across the globe, the world is facing many great unknowns all at once. 

Instead of featuring a movie or series for us to review for the month we are asking you to try to observe the mediasphere during this month and see if you can get a sense of what is happening locally and non-locally. Go outside your reality bubbles and try to get as many perspectives as possible of events as they unfold around you. If you are taking our Media Shaman Toolkit mini-course, use the sensemaking techniques we talk about there. Be aware of any stories, events, media expressions or general observations that call to you for further exploration. You are invited to share these at the bottom of this posting in the comment area and/or bring them into our live discussion on Sunday November 15th at 12pm PT.

In the live discussion we will share a perception practice to aid your ability to “read” the mediasphere zeitgeist, along with additional tools and maps to help us make sense of what is happening in the mediasphere. We will discuss how to seek the biggest picture we can and how to discern what the calling is for us in relationship to what is unfolding around us.

We will also be exploring how we can face our individual and collective shadow material that is being reflected in the mediasphere without getting caught in polarization or getting overwhelmed by the darkness we see. We will also explore how to help shepherd us through the Great Transition we are going through by helping to seek a new future unlike the past while also trying to help limit the collateral damage and suffering as the systems of the past necessarily collapse around us.

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Media Shaman Studio is a monthly in-depth public lecture and discussion series on the relationship between consciousness and media with host and facilitator, Mark Allan Kaplan, Ph.D and Jonathan Steigman. This series is offered for free and is open to all members of the Conscious Good Creators Network, the general public, and participants in our Media Shaman courses. 

 

Surfing the Inflection Point

As we approach election day here in the United States I would like to take a moment to express my deep gratitude to all of you for supporting our work in your own way and to perhaps offer some ways we can use media to help ourselves, those we love and all of humanity through these challenging times.

First, I want to thank everyone who is contributing to my Medicine for Mark GoFundMe campaign, helping to keep me stable until we find a cure. My medicine is helping and I am able to do more than I could before. I still struggle every day to function in many ways but I have a lot of help from family and friends and community services agencies. In the meantime I am doing everything within my power to continue my work and help as many people as possible to navigate the media war on our consciousness, which is part of the great transition we are going through. 

Secondly, I also want to thank all my long time supporters, contributors, co-researchers and co-learners for all that you have done to support and contribute to my work through the Integral Cinema Project.

Media Shaman Offerings

Finally I wish to thank the Transformative Media course participants who helped me awaken to the Media Shaman framing of this whole process. This awakening is not just about my framing of this work. It also includes a deeply personal re-awakening of my own Media Shaman journey which started many years ago when one of my teachers, Barbara Myerhoff, basically told me that I was a Media Shaman...that my stuttering was considered a calling to heal myself and others through media. With this reframing of the work into the Media Shaman framework, that original transformative framing from Dr. Myerhoff flowered inside my being and bore more fruit for my own journey of transformation. 

So you may be wondering what is a media shaman? Media shamans works toward using media to help heal and evolve themselves, others and the world. They transform their own perceptual field into an object in their awareness and an evolutionary accelerator, and help others do the same. The Media Shaman sees the bigger picture and uses media as an individual and collective healing and evolutionary intervention coming from these higher perspectives, attempting to address problems at the level of cause rather than the level of effect. 

Here are our new reframed Media Shaman offerings:

• Media Shaman Toolkit - A 3-part video course to improve your ability to make sense of the world, learn how to use the transformative potential of media, and help yourself and others evolve into the grounded consciousness we need right now (Available now; see video below)
• Media Shaman MasterClass - Our 15 week Transformative Media Creation and Reception Course on using, designing and creating media for the transformation of self, other and world (Course starting in mid-November; see video below). The MasterClass includes a Certificate of Completion and entrance into our ongoing Media Shaman Community of Practice.
• Media Shaman Studio - A free monthly online and live discussion exploration of consciousness and media (formally the Conscious Movie-of-the-Month group) 

Research Breakthrough: Using Media to Accelerate the Evolution of Individual and Collective Consciousness

Together we have made many great discoveries along the way and I want to share with you the biggest one we have come across so far. This discovery happened through our Transformative Media Creation and Reception course at Campus Co-Evolve (the Media Shaman MasterClass), with amazing contributions from all the participants of both cohorts so far and the Campus Co-Evolve team and its founder George Pór. What we discovered together is a way to accelerate the evolution of our individual and collective consciousness using media. This breakthrough is important because all major problems in the world are the product of an unprecedented gap between our technologies and our capacities to use them in a healthy way. This is a gap between the stages of development of our technologies and the stages of development of our individual, cultural and societal consciousness. So the key is for us to accelerate the evolution of our individual and collective consciousness to catch up to our technologies and keep pace with them going forward. And according to our research, the key to this acceleration of the evolution of consciousness is for as many of us as possible to become active observers of our own perceptual field using the very technologies we are trying to catch up with.

So what is the secret here? The secret is that if we train ourselves to continually observe our own perceptual field as an object in our experience, then our perceptual field becomes a developmental accelerator itself. This appears to occur when we use a unique educational process we discovered that trains us to be aware of how media communicates with us and affects us, how consciousness is embedded in our media, and how that embedding affects our own consciousness and perceptual field. This unique educational process is what we are calling media-assisted consciousness training and integrates the following approaches:

• Media metatheory theory and practice, or praxis;
• Individual embodied learning projects combined with collective intelligence research and support teamwork;
• Individual and collective perception practices;
• Media-mirroring techniques, which entails the use of media creation and reception processes as both a mirror for our own consciousness and a learning tool to transform our perceptual field into an object of our experience (Based on the work of Edgar Morin); 
• 3-brain neuroplasticity training to help participants restructure their own neural pathways and reprogram their minds to constantly observe their own perceptual field. 

For more on this breakthrough check out the talk we did with some of the course participants for the Up Convergence Conference and to experience it yourself take the Media Shaman MasterClass in Transformative Media Creation and Reception starting mid-November.

This Moment...

And in this moment, as the world holds its breath, no one can be sure what the world will look like on November 4th. We are in a potentially major liminal inflection point moment, as we discussed in our last update. One of the things we can do is to be one with the uncertainty, entering a liminal space in our own beingness, and move through the moment with full awareness and presence, letting go of what was and opening to what might be...and do our best to Surf the Inflection Point. And if you want some tools to help you navigate through these challenging times, both our Media Shaman Toolkit and the MasterClass are designed to help.

In deep gratitude to you all...Stay well, Stay Safe, Stay Awake.

Mark

Mark Allan Kaplan, Ph.D.
Founder and Executive Director
Integral Cinema Project

Integral Cinema 2019 Year in Review

Welcome to 2020! 2019 has been a major transition year for the Integral Cinema Project. We shifted our energy and focus toward meeting the challenges humanity is facing as part of the current global-scale evolutionary crisis (which is the root cause of all our current global-scale challenges like climate change, mass species extinctions, wealth inequality, rising ethno-nationalism and more). Our research on the co-evolution of the moving image, consciousness, technology, culture and society indicates all these crises are the products of the growing gap between the evolution of our technologies and the evolution of our collective consciousness. We seem to lack the collective capacity to use these advanced technologies for healthy, life-sustaining and life-flourishing purposes.

Our research suggests our best shot at limiting the potential suffering related to this major evolutionary transition is by using our advanced technologies to help accelerate the evolution of individual and collective consciousness. Because of the short time we have to heal this gap between our collective consciousness and our technologies before the projected collapse of our current civilizational structures, we are focusing our attention on training as many integral (r)evolutionary change agents to use these advanced media technologies to accelerate the evolution of individual and collective consciousness, open sourcing our data, tools and practices to the world, and developing a global at-scale evolutionary media intervention.

This year the Integral Cinema Project embarked on a number of exciting new ventures...

The Cinevolve Inititive

This year the Integral Cinema Project embarked on a number of exciting new ventures. We have been called to codify what we’ve learned and put it into practice so we can begin to train media makers to understand Integral thinking and incorporate it into their own work. The time for research and theory-building expands to include a new initiative to put our findings out into the world! To this end, we have joined forces with other evolutionary-oriented institutions and organizations including Conscious Good Networks and Campus Co-Evolve, and created The Cinevolve Initiative, a Manhattan Project-style research and enactment initiative to uplift humanity through these challenging times by storifying and gamifying the stages of human development and the evolution of individual and collective consciousness. Operating under the auspices of the Integral Cinema Project, Cinevolve aims to create “proof of concept” content and train others to do so as well.

Conscious Movie-of-the-Month

This year we joined with the Conscious Good Creators Network to bring integral cinema theory and practice to this collective of transformative media makers from around the world through our Conscious Movie-of-the-Month (CMoM) integral movie review and discussion series. The following are the 2019 CMoM virtual discussions:

• The Matrix
• Selma
• What the Bleep Do We Know?
• Avatar
• The Great Hack
• Game of Thrones
• Black Panther
• Inception

Integral Cinema Courses 2019

This year also saw the beginning of our initiative to train as many media-makers in integral cinematic consciousness as possible to help assist humanity in navigating through our current evolutionary crisis/transition.

• Transformative Media Creation and Reception - This year we also joined forces Campus Co-Evolve to create a Transformative Media Creation and Reception course to train evolutionary change agent and activists from around the world to use media in support of their efforts to help humanity evolve.
• Conscious Media-Making 101 - In this introductory course for the Conscious Good Creators Network, Integral Cinema Project founder Mark Allan Kaplan, Ph.D. explores what is conscious media and conscious media-making, what are some of the different potential forms of conscious media-making, and how different states and stages of consciousness effect the media-making process. Mark also explores how these structures of consciousness within us are communicated between us, the works we create and the individuals and collectives that experience our works…and how this knowledge can be used to create deeper and more transformative media experiences for creators and viewers on the individual and collective levels.

Integral Movie and TV List Updates 2019

The following are all the 2019 movies and TV series that tested positive for having integral elements and have been added to our IMDb Integral Movie and TV List.

• High Flying Bird (Netflix, 2019) - Steven Soderbergh's elegantly complex exploration of the personal, interpersonal, cultural, social and historical dimensions of African American basketball behind-the-scenes politics that gives us a beautiful and deeply resonant "big picture" multi-dimensional perspective on the effects of structurally embedded white supremacy. 
• Undone (Amazon Prime, 2019) - Amazingly beautiful exploration of the line between madness and enlightenment and the indigenous magic worldview and the modern and postmodern worldviews. This little hybrid animated gem using complex storytelling to take on cinematic trip into multiple dimensions of being and becoming.  
• The Mandalorian (Disney+, 2019) - The first live-action series of the integrally-informed Star Wars Saga that marks a return to the saga's mythic storytelling roots in a clean and simple story structure. It also grounds us back intp an essential "Force"-oriented story that pulls our heart-strings with the introduction of "Baby Yoda". In many ways this series feels like an attempt to heal some of the fans wounds of the missteps taken in The Last Jedi and Solo and it appears to be doing just that. 
• Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (Disney/Lucasfilm, 2019) - Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is a masterpiece of integral-archetypal filmmaking completing the integrally-informed Star Wars Saga triple-trilogy journey with a visceral cinematic synergy that beautifully brings together multiple saga-wide storyworld streams to a wondrous crescendo. A must-see for integrally-informed Star Wars fans.

Integral Cinema Publications 2019

The following is a list of all our publications published in 2019:

• Avatar and the Co-Evolution of Consciousness, Culture and Society - An exploration of the Co-Evolutionary relationship of consciousness, cultural worldviews and societal structures and how it is reflected in "Avatar."
• Cinema and the Evolutionary Emotional-Aesthetics of Sri Aurobindo - This is a research report on one of our current research projects exploring the integral-evolutionary theories and approaches of Sri Aurobindo's work.
• Breaking the Wheel: Reflections on Game of Thrones, Selma and the Great Transition - An  exploration of the parallels between the "Game of Thrones" series (2011-2019), our current evolutionary moment and the movie "Selma" (2014).
• Healers in the Hood: Reflections on the Passing of John Singleton, Selma and the New Consciousness in African American Cinema - An exploration of the connections between the passing of African American filmmaker John Singleton, the film "Selma by African American filmmaker Ava DuVernay and the new movement in African American Cinema towards a more complex and comprehensive integral conscious-raising approach to capturing and confronting the continuing challenges faced by African Americans including structural and hidden racism and white supremacy.
• The Matrix and the Evolution of Consciousness - Or, taking the Red Pill and waking up to the coming of Winter: Reflections on meta-perspectival storytelling, The Matrix, Game of Thrones and our current global situation.
• The Pluralistic Worldview of Netflix’s Unbelievable - An examination of the ways the show is solidly Pluralistic, and how it could have been more Integral.

T.E.H.N.C. Podcast - Integral Cinema Sessions 2019

The following are this years integral cinema video podcast sessions between Integral Cinema Project founder Mark Allan Kaplan, Ph.D. and our Director of Communications and the host of the TEHNC Podcast series, Jonathan Steigman.

• New Black Cinema: Roundup - Jonathan and Mark do a roundup of the latest works in the movement we have dubbed "The New Black Cinema." From "Black Panther" to "Black Lightning," from "Blindspotting" to "If Beale Street Could Talk," we discuss the state-of-the-art in New Black Cinema and its integral and near-integral underpinnings. 
• Why the Game of Thrones finale is BRILLIANT! - Jonathan and Mark make the case that the GoT finale managed several extraordinary moves that deepened and anchored the entire series. With the finale, the whole arc and purpose of Game of Thrones became clear. The show is about the transition from the Mythic structure and the end of feudalism...and the rise and fall of an authoritarian demagogue with weapons of mass destruction. 
• The Big Picture of the NOW - Jonathan interviews Mark as he explains why "All problems are problems of consciousness" and unpacks the current global situation: how we got here, why it's unprecedented in world history, and why media in all its evolving forms may be the best and most powerful tool to awaken us into a new paradigm of being.  
• Why The Rise of Skywalker is brilliant! (and why it matters) - Mark and Jonathan make the case that: 1. J.J. Abrams took an impossible task and delivered beyond our expectations in this final installment of the Star Wars trilogies; 2. The Star Wars saga has important resonances throughout our culture and society, beyond almost any other popular work; 3. Critics (and film theorists and scholars) by and large don't know how to read the film, or evolutionary media in general. 

Community Partnerships 

In addition to the above projects we have been doing this last year with our partners, we are working with them in various other ways as well.

• Campus Co-Evolve - We are developing additional transformative media courses and a Transformative Media Community of Practice with Campus Co-Evolve and working with the Campus’s founder, collective intelligence pioneer George Pór, to develop a collective intelligence approach to media-making. 
• Conscious Good - We are developing additional courses and workshops with the Conscious Good Creators Network, we advised them on a research study exploring the connection between consciousness and media, and some of our integral cinema research findings were presented by Conscious Good founder Trina Wyatt at the Visionaries Summit, which was also attended by Integral Cinema Project founder Mark Allan Kaplan and Director of Communications Jonathan Steigman. 
• Transformative Technology Community - This year we became a community partner with the Transformative Technology community of the San Francisco Bay Area, we were on the support team for the TransTech 2019 Conference, and we attended the TransTech Academy incubator for a second year in a row as well.

January 2020 Conscious Movie-of-the-Month

This month’s Conscious Movie-of-the-Month is Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019) and the entire Star Wars Saga

Join us this month as we explore perhaps the most successful consciousness-raising cinematic work of all time, the nine+ theatrical film Star Wars saga, which finally completes its major storyworld arc with the theatrical release of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.

Star Wars is unique in the history of cinema on so many fronts; that one cinematic work could have such a deep and expansive impact on individual and collective consciousness as well as major effects at the cultural and social level is truly mind-blowing. A small sampling of its impacts include:

• The rebirthing of mythology for the modern and postmodern age;
• The introduction of numerous technological advances in both filmmaking and the movie watching experience, advancing the fields of special effects, animation, sound design, and theatrical projection and sound systems that all increased the capacity for more immersive and consciousness-raising experiences for all cinematic works;
• The introduction of the “hybrid” genre, which integrates multiple cinematic genres into a meaningful whole and which has contributed to the penetration of an integral structure of consciousness into the popular entertainment domain;
• And of course, the introduction of the idea of The Force and the exploration of the very nature of individual/local consciousness and collective/non-local consciousness and their intersection, as well as exploring various evolutionary dynamics of consciousness and its relation to the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual dimensions of being and becoming.

For this Conscious Movie-of-the-Month event, in addition to our regular virtual chat about the film later in the month we will be posting several articles and video podcasts exploring the transformative impact of this groundbreaking and historic cinematic work.

The Rise of Skywalker is currently in theaters. We recommend watching the film at least twice, the second time with the intention of seeing any patterns of consciousness you had not seen before. You can increase the transformative potential of the second viewing experience by reading the upcoming article and watching the podcasts. As always, you are also invited to share your thoughts, reflections and musings about the movie in our group's online discussion forum.

If you have not seen any or all of the three major trilogies of the Star Wars Saga (Star Wars 1 - 9) you can still participate in this exploration by reading the Wikipedia overview of all the films, reading our articles and viewing our podcasts on the saga, and joining us for our virtual discussion. If you are really ambitious and want to binge watch some or all of the series you can now stream every major work of the saga (excluding The Rise of Skywalker, which is currently in theaters) on Disney's new online streaming service, Disney+ (a free trial is currently available).

Happy New Year and New Decade to all...and...

May the Force be with us!

An Integral Cinema Christmas 2019

For those of you looking for an integral movie to go see at the theaters during the holiday season, look no further than the epic conclusion of the integrally-informed Star Wars Saga with:

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019)

(In theaters around the world

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is a masterpiece of integral-archetypal filmmaking completing the integrally-informed Star Wars Saga triple-trilogy journey with a visceral cinematic synergy that beautifully brings together multiple saga-wide storyworld streams to a wondrous crescendo. A must-see for integrally-informed Star Wars fans. Stay tuned for more on the movie and its integral cinematic underpinnings...

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For those of you wanting to watch an integral movie this holiday season that integrally captures the spirit of the season check out these two films:

12 Dates of Christmas (2011)

(Available for streaming online at Amazon Prime, iTunes and Disney+)

The 12 Dates of Christmas is a sweet and sappy Christmas movie that uses the integrally-informed evolutionary time loop formula from Groundhog Day with a Christmas spin and a female main character; a cute little movie filled with holiday spirit and light on the outside and deep evolutionary patterns on the inside.

Dear Santa (2011)

(Available for streaming online at Amazon Prime, iTunes and Netflix)

Dear Santa is another sweet and sappy Christmas movie that follows a female character through her evolution during one holiday season. Our main character is swept into a period of accelerated development when a little girl's letter to Santa appears to magically find its way into her hands and sends her on an emotional journey that helps her evolve from being a egocentric spoiled ditsy rich girl to a more mature woman whose circle of care and concern has expanded to include all of humanity.

“What the Bleep Do We Know” about Tapping into the Zeitgeist?

What the Bleep Do We Know (2004)

Exploring What the Bleep Do We Know (2004) as this month’s Conscious Movie-of-the-Month selection has made clear that one of the major hallmarks of this work is that it somehow tapped into the zeitgeist, or the spirit of the times. The historical data suggests that a media works’ potential to achieve financial success or major transformative impact is directly related to its relationship to the zeitgeist, or collective field at the time of its release. Even traditional entertainment industry watchers have recognized this issue, as reflected in this Hollywood Reporter article from 2015. This is a wonderful insight, to be sure, but it begs a larger question: Is it possible to create a media work with the intention of connecting with the zeitgeist? Or is this too subtle and complex a connection for us to work with on a conscious and direct level?

Using What the Bleep as a case study I think is valuable for helping us examine this question. What we have learned from the filmmakers William Arntz and Betsy Chasse, and one of the distributors of the film, Ron Laurie, during this month was that they were conscious of it happening on some level at some point during the creation process, and they attempted to ride the wave the best they could in each of their own ways and as a team. Exploring their distribution efforts, we see an example of using an integral approach to consciously tap into the zeitgeist wave and maximize the ride…which they did successfully.

I have been researching this potential to consciously tap into the zeitgeist, or as we say in Integral Theory, tapping into the “evolutionary impulse,” or the driving force of the evolving universe. From this perspective the zeitgeist can be seen as the current collective field within the evolutionary stream of a culture and society. The key to tapping into it is to become conscious of the evolutionary arc behind this wave. Becoming conscious of the evolutionary arc that has led to any given moment in the life of an individual or the collective has the potential to give us the capacity to sense the energy of trajectory of this collective wave, and in turn the evolutionary impulse behind it. While this is a very complex and subtle process our research suggests it is indeed possible to consciously tap into the zeitgeist and evolutionary impulse, and thus increase our chances of both audience reach and transformative impact.

To learn more about this process and how you can ride the zeitgeist wave yourself, be sure to join Trina Wyatt, myself and special guest, What the Bleep co-creator, Betsy Chasse for our live virtual chat on Wednesday June 26th at 6 pm PST.

Conscious Movie-of-the-Month Live Discussion (April 2019) - "The Matrix"

This video is a recording of the April 2019 Conscious Movie-of-the-Month Video Conference Call - Exploring "The Matrix" with Mark Allan Kaplan, Ph.D. 

Date: April 25, 2019
Sponsor: Conscious Good Creators Network
Group: Conscious Movie-of-the-Month Club

"The Matrix" and the Evolution of Consciousness

Or, taking the Red Pill and waking up to the coming of Winter: Reflections on meta-perspectival storytelling, The Matrix, Game of Thrones and our current global situation

According to my research into the potential co-evolution of the moving image, consciousness, culture and society, The Matrix (1999) helped to introduce a higher form of cinematic consciousness* into mainstream pop culture. The foundation of this higher form of cinematic consciousness could be called meta-perspectival storytelling.

Meta-perspectival storytelling refers to stories that unfold through both major and minor shifts in perspective that often reveal whole new ways of understanding and experiencing the storyworld unfolding before us. Think of the red-blue pill moment in The Matrix, or the self-as-ghost revelation at the end of The Sixth Sense (1999), the shifting realities of a television series like Lost (2004) or the progressive, reality-shaking awakening of characters to the true coming threat of winter in Game of Thrones (2011). All of these works use meta-perspectival storytelling to drive their stories and characters to greater levels of understanding and capacities.

This form of storytelling has been around for a while in various forms but not until the release of both The Matrix and The Sixth Sense in 1999, did this form penetrate the pop culture cinematic language in a big way. Since then, more and more cinematic works have been using this form of storytelling, creating deeper and more expansive works with layers and layers of perceptual realities that hide and reveal themselves over time, guiding us and the characters to greater levels of understanding and revelation. Meta-perspectival storytelling is born out of a specific stage of development and structure of consciousness, often referred to as Integral Consciousness. The key to this structure of consciousness is the drive to understand all dimensions and perspectives of our reality and integrate them into a meaningful whole, a "big picture" meta-perspective.

I find it beautifully symbolic that this month is the 20th anniversary of The Matrix (1999-2019), the film that helped birth this expansion of cinematic consciousness, and the start of the final season of Game of Thrones (2011-2019), the series that helped to evolve this form of storytelling to new levels of richness, depth and complexity for a global scale audience that more easily and deeply understands, embodies and enjoys this form of consciousness and storytelling.

I also find it rather haunting and inspiring to look at how this evolution of storytelling and viewer consciousness coincides with the ever deepening and expanding deconstruction of so many of our individual and collective mental, emotional and perspectival constructs within and around us. This deconstruction has culminated in the whirlwind of reality bubbles, fake news, propaganda networks and "alternate truth" in which we currently find ourselves. I have to wonder if all these meta-perspectival stories feeding our imaginations these last twenty years are an expression of our collective consciousness preparing us to make some big perspectival transition, helping more and more of us to wake up to the coming of our own global climate change and political, cultural and social regression winter, and to individually and collectively search for the red pill that will wake us all up in time.



*NOTE: Cinematic consciousness as I define it comes from my research into the relationship between the moving image, consciousness, culture and society. This research suggests that human beings project their structures of consciousness into their creative works. This in turn appears to create similar composite structures of consciousness embedded in these works. In a sense these embedded consciousness structures create a kind of cinematic consciousness that lives within the constructed cinematic reality of these moving images. And this cinematic consciousness in turn affects viewer consciousness.

Announcing the Conscious Movie-of-the-Month Club

A Monthly Exploration of Consciousness and the Movies

Conscious Good Creators Network presents the Conscious Movie-of-the-onth Club with Integral Cinema Project Founder and Executive Director Mark Allan Kaplan, Ph.D., for anyone who wants to use media to raise individual and collective consciousness.

About the Club 

Join fellow conscious media creators and media enthusiasts each month for an in-depth look at conscious cinema with host and facilitator Mark Allan Kaplan, Ph.D. Together we will explore how consciousness is expressed in and through the movies, and how we can use movies to help us evolve our consciousness.

As a member of the club you will have access to the club’s online forum and the entire Conscious Good Creators Network. At the beginning of each month we will announce the movie of the month for us all to watch on our own and then explore together in the online discussion forum. On the last Thursday of the month we will have a video conference call where Mark will share his reflections on the movie from a conscious, integral and transpersonal perspective. Participants will also have the opportunity to share personal reflections, questions and musings.

As a member of the club you will also be invited to experiment with some of the conscious media viewing practices Mark has developed over the years. These can help you to deepen and expand the viewing experience and help you develop your own transformative media viewing practice if you so desire.

About the Host/Facilitator 

Mark Allan Kaplan, Ph.D. is an award-winning filmmaker, transdisciplinary artist, media psychologist and researcher, and the founder and executive director of the Integral Cinema Project. As an artist and media-maker Mark has been exploring conscious art and media since childhood, attempting to use these creative mediums to help himself transcend his own communication challenges of being a severe childhood stutterer. He uses his conscious art practices to find his "voice" and use that voice to help raise the consciousness of himself, others and the world. He is considered by many to be one of the pioneers in the conscious and transpersonal media movements and is the world's leading researcher and theorist in the application of Integral Theory to the cinematic arts.

For more on Mark visit: www.markallankaplan.com, and to learn about the Integral Cinema Project visit: www.integralcinema.com.

Details

• Dates/Times: 
• Movie of the month announcement, first of the month, starting April 1, 2019 
• Online discussions, ongoing 
• Video conference calls, 7pm PST, last Thursday of the month, starting April 25, 2019 
• Cost: Free (requires free membership to the network) 
• Host: Conscious Good Creators Network 

About Conscious Good Creators Network 

Conscious Good Creators Network is a community-driven media platform for visual storytellers dedicated to raising consciousness. Conscious Good launched the Creators’ Network as a place where conscious creators and audiences can connect. It’s a place to interact with fellow conscious media tribe members, share resources, ideas and support one another.

SIGN UP FOR THE NETWORK AND THE CLUB

Structures of Cinematic Consciousness

My new Integral Cinema Project white paper on Structures of Cinematic Consciousness is now available for online viewing and download.

This paper includes a preliminary mapping of how stages of human development and the structures of consciousness that make up each stage are embedded in moving image-based artifacts such as movies, television, online and mobile video, video games, virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed reality mediums. These mappings are based on a meta-analysis of hundreds of moving image artifacts cross-referenced with research on stages of human development, structures of individual and collective human consciousness, human perception, creative expression, and cultural and social anthropology.

This research suggests that human beings project their structures of consciousness into their creative works. This in turn appears to create similar composites of structures of consciousness embedded in these works. In a sense these embedded consciousness structures create a kind of cinematic consciousness that lives within the constructed cinematic reality of these moving images.

Available at: https://www.academia.edu/37998059/Structures_of_Cinematic_Consciousness

"Integral Goes to the Movies" Slideshow

The slide show for the "Integral Goes to the Movies" presentation I gave for Bay Area Integral is now available for viewing and download... Topics include the embedding of structures of consciousness in the moving image; the co-evolution of the moving image, consciousness, culture and society; more fully understanding the power of the medium and how it can be used for transformative and evolutionary purposes; and what is Integral theory and what makes a movie "integral"

 

Integral Goes to the Movies from Mark Allan Kaplan

The Ark of Consciousness: A Creative Inquiry into a Model for Transformative Spatial Metadesign

Announcing the online posting of The Ark of Consciousness, my Masters Integral Paper that introduces a model for transformative spatial design that I developed using the example of the development of a transformative community and university with outreach, agency and enactment capacities.

This model for spatial metadesign is multidimensional in scope. The metadesign of this proposed transformative community space encompasses its structures, landscape, maintenance & services, subtle energy fields and organizational paradigm. The forces of community, personal growth, spiritual development, education, service, commerce, and ecology are interwoven throughout the community's function and form. The metadesign also attempts to bring together the symbols and archetypes of the worlds' spiritual traditions while aligning integral, transpersonal, complexity and ecological theories with action.

The metadesign of this community space exists on the gross, subtle and causal level. The gross level includes physical forms and the general functions of these forms. The subtle level is the realm of subtle energy fields, eco-design, sacred geometry, directional forces and numerological design elements. The causal level includes the goals, purpose, mission, vision and values of the community. These forces combined are designed to create a multidimensional environment to support, nurture and induce individual and collective transformations of consciousness. While this example is for a physical community space, the theories and approaches used can be equally applied to the creation of virtual and immersive spatial realities as well.

Complete paper available at: https://www.academia.edu/35925956/The_Ark_of_Consciousness_A_Creative_Inquiry_into_a_Model_for_Transformative_Spatial_Metadesign

Research Report: Integral Cinema Project 2017 Year in Review

Due to the profound shifts in the American zeitgeist, this past year has been deeply soul-searching for many individuals and collectives, and that includes myself and my work through the Integral Cinema Project. I have been asking the question, how can I and the Integral Cinema Project respond to this new landscape and be of service to the evolutionary moment in which we find ourselves? Life as usual just isn’t working any more. I feel a deep impetus to rise to the calling of this moment and seek the what-when-and-how of that calling. While I still do not have all the answers I am called to finally communicate with you and update you on the state of the Integral Cinema journey…

With the ongoing support of many of you, I have been working on several projects this past year, each exploring in some way how to respond to the calling of this new zeitgeist. These include:

Media Literacy for the Post-Truth Age

An Integral Cinema Project presentation to the Carey Institute for Global Good outlining an integrally-informed approach to media literacy designed to help people discern what is the truth in this age of fake news, reality bubbles and invisible propaganda networks. 

Art-in-Motion Video Series

A collection of moving image meditations that attempt to use advanced audiovisual and cinematic entrainment technologies along with animated abstract art to explore the human perceptual field, potentially inducing shifts in our awareness of our own perceptual field and bringing the normally unconscious perceptual construct-forming system of the human mind to conscious awareness.

45 Day Integral Art and Media Experiment

My 45 day lived-inquiry experiment of doing a video journal recording and creating a work of art  (still and/or moving image) every day, along with video journal notes on my integral cinema research and soul searching process. The 45 day time-frame is purported to be the time it takes for the human brain to lay down new neural pathways to make a behavior feel natural and easy. Given my history as stutterer, I chose video journaling to see if I could transcend my awkward feelings around speaking in front of the camera. I chose daily art creation to see if I could transcend the constructs that prevent me from fully owning my creative soul.

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I have also been busy on the integral cinema research front:

• Exploring an integral approach to more deeply understanding the language of the moving image;

• Developing an integral transformative approach to cinematic and experiential design to help creators storify and gamify the spiral of human development;

• Experimenting with new inception and creation practices designed to help creators tap into the evolutionary impulse and generate new story ideas that will speak to the calling of the evolutionary moment;

• Working on a new integral cinematic lens (The Evolutionary Lens) based on the work of Sri Aurobindo and others, and;

• Continuing to write my book on integral cinema (stay tuned...).

At the same time, I have continued my research into the co-evolution of the moving image, consciousness, culture and society, and testing cinematic works for signs of the integral structure of consciousness. For those interested I have posted the 2017 new integral movie and television discoveries on the IMDb Integral Movie and TV List.

On the publication front, I wrote a short piece on What Sam Sheppard Taught me about Storytelling and Life to mark his passing.

On the education front, I am redesigning the meta-movieology courses on using the moving image for the evolution of consciousness, and developing them into asynchronous online courses for general release.

On the enactment front, I am currently in production on an integrally-informed avant-garde video meditation on the wind, and am in development on a low-budget feature film and a television series, videogame and VR/AR/MR transmedia project designed to storify and gamify the individual and collective evolutionary spiral. These projects are all enactment experiments designed to utilize and test the new integral-evolutionary inception and design approaches I am been researching and developing.

And amidst all this I was honored that the Integral Cinema Project was named one of the TransTech 200 Innovators for advancing the work of using technologies for individual and collective transformation.

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I believe every problem we have is a problem of consciousness, and that media is one of the most powerful tools humanity has created to affect consciousness on a deep and expansive level. As we have seen more clearly this past year, media has the capacity to shape the hearts and minds of millions of people, for good and for bad. We live in times of ever-present and hyperreal media, fake news and vast propaganda networks. We must find more ways to mitigate and transcend the use of media to manipulate and limit our capacities, and to use media for higher and nobler purposes. I am committed to continuing to work towards these goals and deeply appreciate all the support I have received.

With deep gratitude,

Mark Allan Kaplan, Ph.D.
Integral Cinema Project
Founder and Executive Director