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In my research into the application of Integral Theory for cinematic media theory and practice, I am continually asking and being asked the question “What is Integral Cinema?” We can start to answer this question by going back to the person who first used this term, French avant-garde filmmaker Germaine Dulac, in the 1920s and 30s. Dulac was a pioneer in both experimental and feminist cinema and used the term “Integral Cinema” to describe her emerging experimental approach. Integral Cinema as defined by Dulac are cinematic works that use the inherent language of the cinema to capture and express the interior and exterior life of both the individual and the collective. Or put another way, a moving image work that uses the cinema’s unique textual, auditory, visual, and temporal (accumulated meaning patterns over the duration of the work) expressive elements to explore and integrate the internal life and external world of the individual and collective.

A recent example of this type of work is The Matrix Trilogy (1999-2003), with the matrix representing the interior life of the individual and collective, and the outside, waking human and machine worlds as the external world of the individual and the collective. You can also see Germaine Dulac’s classic Integral cinematic work The Seashell and the Clergyman (1928) in its entirely for free online at: http://www.ubu.com/film/dulac_coquille.html (the above image is from this film).

With further inquiry I discovered that this definition just scratches the surface of answering the question, What is Integral Cinema?…and in upcoming posts I will flesh flesh out the more complete answer to this question…

For over a year now, Integral Cinema Project Lead Researcher Mark Allan Kaplan has been producing a groundbreaking monthly article series at Integral Life: the much-acclaimed Integral Cinema Studio. In this remarkable exploration, Mark walks us through all of the main elements of Integral theory—using some of our favorite movies to illustrate the basics of the Integral approach, while noting how each of these elements has shaped the cinema experience since the invention of film itself. Not only does this series offer a wealth of perspective and insight to film, filmmakers, and audiences alike, but it also brings more color, more sound, and more awesome explosions to Integral thought and practice! Listen as Mark and Ken Wilber take an in-depth look at one of Integral Life’s longest-running series, Integral Cinema Studio.

This dialogue serves as a wonderful introduction to the major elements of integral theory. For those already familiar with the Integral model, this is a nice opportunity to both revisit your understanding of integral theory and to see how it can be applied to just about any interest, activity, or pursuit that you may have.

Either way, Integral Cinema Studio is a terrific way to deepen and enrich your own experience of film, simply by recognizing some of the deeper patterns and perspectives running through your favorite movies that you may not have recognized before. All of the elements of the Integral model are present in our awareness right now; Integral theory simply points to all the various aspects and dimensions that shape our experience of this present moment. It’s therefore no surprise that we can see all of these elements reflected in various characters, conflicts, and stories throughout the history of film. Of course, whether the film-makers themselves actually intended this, or just intuited it, is another question—and to some degree inconsequential to the beauty and profundity we experience when these ideas and perspectives come to life on the big screen.

What’s more, this discussion and blog series promises to inspire a whole new generation of writers and filmmakers. It’s not just how you express these perspectives, ideas, and insights—Integral Art does not require you to represent all quadrants, all levels, all lines, all states, etc. in your work (though all of these elements are implicitly present in every piece of art). Rather, it’s about whether you are able to account for all of these in your own awareness, thereby allowing you to draw from a far richer, more colorful, and more comprehensive pallet of human experience.

So grab a snack from the concession stand, turn off your phone, and enjoy this groundbreaking discussion between Mark Allan Kaplan and Ken Wilber!

Introduction Written by Corey W. deVos

Available at: http://integrallife.com/ken-wilber-dialogues/integral-cinema-studio-comprehensive-guide-cinema-experience

During my research into the application of Integral Theory for cinematic media theory and practice I have been developing and experimenting with potential integrally-informed viewing practices. One practice that appears to be significantly effective for establishing an integrally-informed viewing set and setting is to do a quick check-in of dimension-perspectives while sitting in the theater, or any in any viewing space, waiting for the cinematic work to start…

Integral Cinema Set and Setting Viewing Practice:

• With eyes open or closed and sitting in a comfortable position,  bring your awareness to your I-space or your inner-beingness or self-ness, feeling what it feels like to be an “I”;
• Then try to sense the WE-space between yourself and the other audience members (or if alone, you can imagine others who have or who are currently viewing the same cinematic work);
• Then bring your awareness to the IT-space or the physical reality around you, the chair or other surface you are sitting in, the floor beneath your feet, the screen in front of you, etc.;
• Then try to sense the ITS-space or the environment around you, the atmosphere of the theater or room as a whole, the air in the space, the auditory resonance of the space, etc.
• Next, bring your awareness to your physical body;
• Then try to sense your energy body, the subtle energetic field within and around you;
• Then bring your awareness to your emotional body, the subtle emotional field radiating within you;
• Then your mental body, the causal field that contains your thoughts and mental images;
• Then your witness body, imagining the ability to witness yourself from the outside of your physical, energetic, emotional and mental beingness;
• Finally try to get a sense of non-dual beingness, that part of you that is part of all that is.

With practice this process can be performed within a couple of minutes and has the potential to help you enter an inner-viewing-space that is open, lucid and aware of multiple domains.

*This practice is adapted from Integral Life Practice.

For over a year now, Integral Cinema Project Lead Researcher Mark Allan Kaplan has been producing a groundbreaking monthly article series at Integral Life: the much-acclaimed Integral Cinema Studio. In this remarkable exploration, Mark walks us through all of the main elements of Integral theory—using some of our favorite movies to illustrate the basics of the Integral approach, while noting how each of these elements has shaped the cinema experience since the invention of film itself. Not only does this series offer a wealth of perspective and insight to film, filmmakers, and audiences alike, but it also brings more color, more sound, and more awesome explosions to Integral thought and practice! Listen as Mark and Ken Wilber take an in-depth look at one of Integral Life’s longest-running series, Integral Cinema Studio.

This dialogue serves as a wonderful introduction to the major elements of integral theory. For those already familiar with the Integral model, this is a nice opportunity to both revisit your understanding of integral theory and to see how it can be applied to just about any interest, activity, or pursuit that you may have.

Either way, Integral Cinema Studio is a terrific way to deepen and enrich your own experience of film, simply by recognizing some of the deeper patterns and perspectives running through your favorite movies that you may not have recognized before. All of the elements of the Integral model are present in our awareness right now; Integral theory simply points to all the various aspects and dimensions that shape our experience of this present moment. It’s therefore no surprise that we can see all of these elements reflected in various characters, conflicts, and stories throughout the history of film. Of course, whether the film-makers themselves actually intended this, or just intuited it, is another question—and to some degree inconsequential to the beauty and profundity we experience when these ideas and perspectives come to life on the big screen.

What’s more, this discussion and blog series promises to inspire a whole new generation of writers and filmmakers. It’s not just how you express these perspectives, ideas, and insights—Integral Art does not require you to represent all quadrants, all levels, all lines, all states, etc. in your work (though all of these elements are implicitly present in every piece of art). Rather, it’s about whether you are able to account for all of these in your own awareness, thereby allowing you to draw from a far richer, more colorful, and more comprehensive pallet of human experience.

So grab a snack from the concession stand, turn off your phone, and enjoy this groundbreaking discussion between Mark Allan Kaplan and Ken Wilber!

Introduction Written by Corey W. deVos

Available at: http://integrallife.com/ken-wilber-dialogues/integral-cinema-studio-comprehensive-guide-cinema-experience

The integration of an Integral or aperspectival vision, or the perceptual lenses of quadrants, levels, lines, states, and types in Ken Wilber’s AQAL model, into a creative work is what Wilber refers  to as comprehensive art, and he differentiates this form of Integral Art from integrally-informed art, which is “any art produced by integral consciousness” (Wilber, 2003). Usually, comprehensive art refers to art that has been consciously created to reflect an integral perspective, but Wilber notes that the art of the cinema is more inherently comprehensive than other artistic mediums because it employs the multiple forms of expression of text, image, and sound (Wilber, 2003).

For over a year now, Integral Cinema Project Lead Researcher Mark Allan Kaplan has been producing a groundbreaking monthly article series at Integral Life: the much-acclaimed Integral Cinema Studio. In this remarkable exploration, Mark walks us through all of the main elements of Integral theory—using some of our favorite movies to illustrate the basics of the Integral approach, while noting how each of these elements has shaped the cinema experience since the invention of film itself. Not only does this series offer a wealth of perspective and insight to film, filmmakers, and audiences alike, but it also brings more color, more sound, and more awesome explosions to Integral thought and practice! Listen as Mark and Ken Wilber take an in-depth look at one of Integral Life’s longest-running series, Integral Cinema Studio.

This dialogue serves as a wonderful introduction to the major elements of integral theory. For those already familiar with the Integral model, this is a nice opportunity to both revisit your understanding of integral theory and to see how it can be applied to just about any interest, activity, or pursuit that you may have.

Either way, Integral Cinema Studio is a terrific way to deepen and enrich your own experience of film, simply by recognizing some of the deeper patterns and perspectives running through your favorite movies that you may not have recognized before. All of the elements of the Integral model are present in our awareness right now; Integral theory simply points to all the various aspects and dimensions that shape our experience of this present moment. It’s therefore no surprise that we can see all of these elements reflected in various characters, conflicts, and stories throughout the history of film. Of course, whether the film-makers themselves actually intended this, or just intuited it, is another question—and to some degree inconsequential to the beauty and profundity we experience when these ideas and perspectives come to life on the big screen.

What’s more, this discussion and blog series promises to inspire a whole new generation of writers and filmmakers. It’s not just how you express these perspectives, ideas, and insights—Integral Art does not require you to represent all quadrants, all levels, all lines, all states, etc. in your work (though all of these elements are implicitly present in every piece of art). Rather, it’s about whether you are able to account for all of these in your own awareness, thereby allowing you to draw from a far richer, more colorful, and more comprehensive pallet of human experience.

So grab a snack from the concession stand, turn off your phone, and enjoy this groundbreaking discussion between Mark Allan Kaplan and Ken Wilber!

Introduction Written by Corey W. deVos

Available at: http://integrallife.com/ken-wilber-dialogues/integral-cinema-studio-comprehensive-guide-cinema-experience

In the early part of the 20th century Swiss cultural philosopher Jean Gebser discovered different structures of human consciousness reflected in various cultures and observed a relatively new emerging structure of consciousness that he eventually termed “Integral.” Gebser detected this new form of consciousness or cultural worldview in many of the scientists, writers, and artists of the early 20th century. He discerned that this new worldview consisted of the transcendence of ego-centered perception and thought, and the realization that the three dimensions of space are relative to the fourth dimension of time, thus producing an aperspectival, or multi-perspectival, time-space transcendent form of consciousness (Feuerstein, 1987). This new form of consciousness, expressed through the arts appeared to include structures in which “time is no longer spatialized but integrated and concretized as a fourth dimension” (Gebser, 1985).

For Gebser, this type of visually concretizing time along with the three-dimensions of space is an essential quality for any work of art to be considered integral because “the concretion of everything that has unfolded in time and coalesced in a spatial array is the integral attempt to reconstitute the ‘magnitude’ of man from his constituent aspects, so that he can consciously integrate himself with the whole” (Gebser, 1985). In addition to the concretion of time, Gebser (1985) also considered the concretion of interiority, or individual and collective interior dimensions, to be a precondition of the integral structure because “only the concrete can be integrated, never the merely abstract” (Gebser, 1985).

Films like Groundhog Day (1993) and Source Code (2011) are clear examples of the concretion of time or the concrete narrativization and visualization of temporal patterns in cinematic works; and films like The Matrix (1999) and Inception (2010) powerfully concretize interior dimensions of mind through text, image, and sound as well.

The term integral cinema was first used by French avant-garde filmmaker Germaine Dulac in the 1920s. Dulac employed this term to describe cinema that utilized the natural inherent language of the cinema to evoke the interior life normally hidden beneath the exterior life of the objective world (Flitterman-Lewis, 1996). This form of cinema was also called pur cinema or visual music, because of the contention by its adherents that the language of the cinema is a language all its own, more related to music or poetics, than to literature or drama. In order to liberate the cinematic image from literary or dramatic expression, “…Dulac sought to create for the spectator a ‘cinegraphic sensation’ that could be achieved through the contemplation of pure forms in movement—the melodic arrangement of luminous reflections, the rhythmic ordering of successive shots” (Flitterman-Lewis, 1996, pp. 69-70).

While Dulac’s theoretical writings and public discourses on integral cinema mostly focus on this definition, her films reveal two distinct types of cinematic approaches. Whereas some of her films did seek to explore pure visual music approaches of using cinematic imagery, movement, and rhythm to reveal the interior life, films like her 1928 classic, La Coquille et le Clergyman (The Seashell and the Clergyman), reveal the raw beginnings of a more comprehensive or “integral” approach that attempts to use the inherent language of the cinema to capture and express the interior and exterior lives of both the individual and the collective. Dulac hints at this approach when she writes, “It isn’t enough to simply capture reality in order to express it in its totality; something else is necessary in order to respect it entirely, to surround it in its atmosphere, and to make its moral meaning perceptible…” (Dulac, as cited in Flitterman-Lewis, 1996, p. 49). This more comprehensive approach hauntingly captures some of the constructs of Jean Gebser’s integral worldview (1985) and Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory (1995) while predating both by 21 and 67 years, respectively.

For more on this see my article Toward an Integral Cinema, available for download at: http://integrallife.com/integral-post/toward-integral-cinema

As an artist of many different mediums (film, drawing, text, photography) I can honestly say that on one level it feels like a miracle when a viewer understands my work in the way that I intended it. And there is often another miracle, when the viewer sees something in my work that I did not consciously intend, but when they speak their truth it rings true for me as well.

I have studied the language of my mediums and how each of their material elements communicate differently across cultures and societies; I have studied the psychology of how individuals perceive and view art; I have studied symbols, metaphors, and archetypes across cultures; and I have studied how different states and stages of development in the viewer and the work communicate with each other. I believe all of these are factors in how the artist communicates to the viewer.

Yet, there is also something else involved here; something I learned in the form of both direct experience and teachings from some of the masters of art I have studied with over the years…this something else is that the more a creative work comes from a deeply personal meaningful place in the artist, the more universal its meaning becomes. This is the great paradox of art and meaning; the more personal the work the more universal and the less personal the work the less universal. Actor and playwright Sam Sheppard said it beautifully when he spoke to my class at the AFI many years ago. He said that if an artist starts with a deeply human truth, one from their own experience or one from the life of another, then the work becomes universal because what is true for one human heart resonates with all other human hearts.

As a practitioner of art as an integral spiritual practice, I also see myself as a creative channel for the Divine. When I align myself with the Creative Source as the Divine Suchness, Thou and I AM, the Source speaks through me into the work and out to the viewer. From this perspective, in addition to my own personal meaning being expressed in and through the work, I believe there is a higher meaning being channeled through me and the work that I most often am not even conscious of. Sometimes I discover this meaning when a viewer shares what they received from the work; other times, years later, I discover this hidden meaning when viewing my work from a different place in my own life journey. In the end, each individual views the work from where they are at on their live journey and when a work of art is a channeled work; I believe it has the capacity to become a kind of magic mirror in which the viewer receives the message that is perfect for them at that particular moment on their life path.

From an Integral perspective, I would say that meaning in art is tetra-resonant, in that a work of art can have subjective, material, cultural, and/or social resonance. This resonance channels meaning between the work of art and the viewer, and one can gauge the general message of the art work through any and all of these resonance channels/dimensions. The more this meaning is rooted in a deep truth in any and all of these dimensions, the more universal the message becomes.

In the end, as an artist I never know for sure beforehand if my intended meaning will translate to others; I can only strive to speak the truth as I perceive and feel it and attempt to communicate it through as many resonance channels and dimensions as possible. I have found that I feel that I have communicated with the audience if I have touched them somehow, and I have come to feel that the reception of my intended meaning is not as important as the reception of the meaning that arises through the wondrous and miraculous process of channeling the creative force…

*Image: Enlightenment by Diana Calvario (dicalva)