Wednesday, August 7th, 2024 from 12:00-1:30pm PDT

Join us for an insightful conversation with award-winning artist and filmmaker Maxi Cohen as she unveils the profound impact ayahuasca has had on her creative journey. Hear firsthand how this sacred medicine has transformed her life and fueled her passion for storytelling through the medium of film. Explore the inspiration behind her captivating films about ayahuasca (including the groundbreaking documentary From Shock to Awe, Ayahuasca Diaries and The Holy Give Me) and her latest project "A Movement in Water," which deeply connects with her ayahuasca experiences. The forum will also examine her involvement with the Brazilian ayahuasca religion Santo Daime, highlighting cultural differences and filming experiences in Brazil and beyond. Moderating the forum will be Ana Flecha, a researcher exploring the Santo Daime bailado,  a central dance practice of the religion, who is revealing neocolonial biases in intellectual debates around and practices with these medicines.

Maxi Cohen is a filmmaker whose groundbreaking movies have played in theaters, festivals, and on television around the world and have influenced two generations of filmmakers. As a media activist, her film and television work has had significant influence in creating visible social change.  As well, she has created several decades-long series of photography and multimedia works. A recipient of awards and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Annenberg and Rockefeller Foundations, and Buckminster Fuller Institute, Maxi’s work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa and other museums.

Ana Flecha is researching the Santo Daime bailado, a dance practice of the Brazilian ayahuasca religion, Santo Daime, first performed around the rubber camps of Rio Branco in 1936 and now performed in more than forty countries. She argues that the bailado choreographs novel mythologies of the Queen of the Forest and the Queen of the Sea recalling histories that brought the Amazon Forest and the Atlantic Ocean into new relationships throughout the colonial period of the Americas. Re-membering the gendered sovereignty of these spaces, Ana’s emergent concept of corpo/realization highlights motility, the impulse to move, as the source of all knowledge, a critical contribution to studies of the healing potential of what are termed “psychedelics.” Integrating dance studies into the burgeoning field of psychedelic science with a disciplinary spine in Latin American and Latinx Studies, Ana’s research reveals neocolonial bias dominating intellectual debates around and practices with these medicines.

The Healing Power of Ayahuasca and Film