Directed by Marcus Lindeen
2018, USA, 97 min
Sat, Aug 10 7 pm screening Introduced by Harry Karlinsky.
Harry will draw attention to the questionable ethics of the Acali experiment and provide some additional details of the experiment as found in the researcher’s book-length account (The Acali Experiment: Five Men and Six Women on a Raft Across the Atlantic for 101 Days). Born in Winnipeg, Harry obtained his M.D. from the University of Manitoba and has a degree in Psychiatry from the University of Toronto and his Masters in Neuroscience degree from the University of London, England. He is a Clinical Professor within UBC’s Department of Psychiatry, a writer and film curator and is the founding and ongoing Director of the award-winning Frames of Mind Mental Health Film Series at the Pacific Cinematheque in Vancouver. He has written about The Raft for POV Magazine.
In the summer of 1973, a young international crew of six women and five men embarked together on a most unusual sea voyage—a trip across the Atlantic from Spain to Mexico on a free-floating raft christened the Acali. The project was initiated by Mexican anthropologist Santiago Genovés, who proposed to use the group as guinea pigs in his investigation of the origins of violent conflict and dynamics of sexual attraction. Contentious from the get-go and mislabelled by the media as ‘The Sex Raft’, the Acali mission stayed afloat for 101 days—and now, more than forty years later, the surviving crew members reunite to reenact and recollect their experience. What results is a document of the thin line between science and cultism in the early ‘70s, a touching story of female camaraderie and, in the character of Genovés, an unforgettable portrait of oblivious, toxic masculinity.
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