Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #100140 in DVD
• Published on: 2003
• Released on: 2005-12-16
• Rating: Unrated
• Format: NTSC
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 70 minutes

Amazon.com
A feature film essay on Aldous Huxley's cultural criticism and

social prophecy in light of the new millennium.

Narration: Dr. Jean Houston.

A contemporary reading of Huxley's oeuvre, a rendition and interpretation, inspired by an immersion into his life and thought. Complex, iconoclastic, psychedelic, and historical.

Aldous Huxley: The Gravity Of Light incorporates rare archival footage, computer rendered 3D animation, speculative fictions, and selections from his essays.

Personal in tone, the film also recalls the impact of Huxley's LSD-25 and mescaline experimentations and writings for a whole generation of youth and examines the utopianistic impulses associated with the recent Rave scene. The work reflects the aesthetics and poesis of the psychedelic state without collapsing into the tie-dye cliches that have trivialized the '60's era.

Doctor Jean Houston, a senior advisor to the United Nations on matters of Human Development, eloquently speaks on the immense contribution Huxley has made concerning the possible human.

Special thanks to Laura Huxley and Jean Houston.

"Hockenhull's simultaneously thoughtful and carefully conceived approach to the subject has made for a kind of documentary I would not hesitate to compare with the works of Trinh T. Minh-ha in form and self-reflexivity and Derek Jarman in style and composition. Hockenhull's approach to this "hybrid" form of cinema manages to aggressively question our presumptions and preconceptions around the current Zeitgeist while simultaneously exploring the knowledge and impact of one of the twentieth century's greatest minds." Alex Mackenzie, Curator/Programmer

Originally produced in 1997 this work is a re-edited/revised edition for DVD (2003) by the director.

Inclusive of additional interview material with Alexander Sasha Shulgin

writer/psychopharmacologist/biochemist

This product is manufactured on demand using DVD-R recordable media. Amazon.com's standard return policy will apply.

Customer Reviews

"The psychedelic gentleman"

"This is not," as the film claims at its outset, "a proper documentary." The Gravity of Light is about Huxley's ideas, not his life, though scattered biographical details are included among the archival footage, excerpted readings, abstract graphics and post-modern tableaux that compose the film. And the documentary isn't conventional in its presentation of Huxley's ideas either; rather than follow the chronology of his intellectual development, the film focuses specifically on the analogies between Huxley's work and the advent of modern technocratic society.

While the director seems to respect his subject, he has chosen to take some experimental liberties with the film, referencing his own relationship with Huxley's work and, in one scene, suggesting that the filmmakers consulted a psychic about the nature of their work. Not all of this is unsuccessful. Unfortunately, in several scenes thick with abstract rhetoric, the film merely uses Huxley's ideas as a launching pad for its own concepts.

That being said, the archival footage of Huxley is a pleasure to watch. And the recollections by Jean Houston and Huston Smith help convey the extraordinary and inspirational influence Huxley has had on others. Although The Gravity of Light tries to be smarter than it really is, the film certainly succeeded in renewing my interest in Huxley. And while it's not, on the whole, a bad source of information about the late writer, it's not the first place I'd recommend looking either. For that, pick up one of Huxley's books.

Worth the price of admission
Oliver Hockenhull's choices of subject never fail to intrigue. In Aldous Huxley: The Gravity of Light, the archival gems of Huxley alone are worth the price of admission. Oliver's treatment of his subject is complex and uncompromising. Not for the faint of intellect, this.

The film demonstrates an evolving and unusual aesthetic, one which continutes, in later work, to develop with impressive technical mastery.

The world is a better place for the likes of mind-altering chemical pioneer Sasha Shulgin. If you've yet to encounter him, the bonus interview on this DVD is a great place to start.

An Imaginative Introduction
A sincere, earnest effort from Canada, utilizing multiple video techniques to give an idea of Aldous Huxley's wide-ranging concerns, including brief segments of an interview with the writer. These however are marred by the questions being not of the best, occasionally producing a bemused smile from Huxley, but do have historic interest. The emphasis here is on those aspects of Huxley's thought which caught the attention of the 60s generation: anti-technology, pacifism, and of course his experimentation with mind-altering drugs. As such a relatively superficial view, but worth it as an introduction, and for those wishing a deeper understanding, especially in the area of cultural criticism, read the essays.