Altered States

No, not the Paddy Chayefsky/Ken Russell film of 1980, but a selection of ten shorts on the same theme: drugs, mainly hallucinogenic, and the mind-altering experiences they impart. Chronologically, the survey will extend all the way from Tod Browning’s 1916 Mystery of the Leaping Fish (with Douglas Fairbanks as Coke Enniday) to Mark Nugent’s recent Manual Labour. The others: Tony Conrad’s The Flicker (with a La Monte Young stereo sound track), John Hawkins’s LSD Wall, Steve Arnold’s Liberation of the Mannique Mechanique, Daina Krumins’s Babobilicons, Adam Beckett’s Heavy-Light, Heather McAdams’s Black Coffee, Bob Cowan’s Rockflow, and Chick Strand’s Waterfall. The Experimental Film Coalition promises free acid at the door, which one assumes is not lysergicbut who knows?

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