BAMPFA’s “Psychedelia & Cinema” Series Explores the Intersection of Film and Altered States
The Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) is currently hosting “Psychedelia & Cinema,” a film series examining how cinema can shift a viewer’s state of mind. Organized in collaboration with the UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics, the series investigates the relationship between the physical properties of film and altered perception, redefining the cinematic experience as a tool for liberation and self-discovery.
Exploring the Cinematic Trip
Kate MacKay, a film curator at BAMPFA, has championed experimental cinema and its ability to challenge our perception of reality for over a decade. She explains that the series spans decades and continents, exploring how film can create a meditative doorway into other universes.
MacKay’s Research and BAMPFA Role
Kate MacKay is an Associate Film Curator at BAMPFA, where she studies the intersection of social, political, and formal resistance in cinema since 1960. She received a grant of $45,000 from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts in Spring 2018 to support her research into the international evolution of resistance filmmaking. Her research included film archives in Berlin, Havana, Tokyo, Paris, and Moscow, focusing on postcolonial African filmmaking, Brazilian Cinema Novo, Third Cinema movements, and radical films of the Japanese new wave.
In addition to curating film series, MacKay collaborates with Berkeley faculty to design curricula and works with library staff and translators to produce foreign resistance films accessible to English-speaking audiences. She is part of the BAMPFA film curatorial team, which also includes Susan Oxtoby, Director of Film & Senior Film Curator, and Jeff Griffith-Perham, Associate Film Curator.
Series Details
“Psychedelia & Cinema” runs through May 10. More information and tickets are available on the BAMPFA website.
Worth a look