Why are we conscious of having a consciousness? This is the puzzle that brain researcher Christof Koch is trying to solve. He gets close to it in a scientific way and researches the connections in our brain in tinier and tinier units. But iultimately what you see iss millions of connection, you don‘t see why these connections lead to us thinking and feeling things. And are we the only ones with consciousness? Biology professor Monica Gagliano studies the behavior of plants in her BI (biological intelligence) lab and has found that they can recognize sounds and, much like Pavlov‘s dog, they can adapt their behavior. This is neither a surprise for Mayan healer Josefa Kirvin Kulix who reports on how plants move when they‘re about to be cut nor is it one for ex scientist Mathieu Ricard, a Buddhist monk whose meditation practice is geared towards finding a way to access universal awareness. The director of the Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research at Johns Hopkins University, Roland R. Griffiths, is trying to find a shortcut with the controlled research with magic mushrooms. After the trip the test subject has to report on how connected they felt with the universe on a scale of one to ten. What‘s primarily interesting about Eric Black and Frauke Sandig‘s cinematic documentary are the scientific approaches to consciousness. The expert‘s passion and the limits they reach in their research crystalizes just how big the puzzle that we‘re dealing with here really is.

Hendrike Bake (INDIEKINO MAGAZIN)

Translation: Elinor Lewy