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Man Isn’T Dying of Thirst (1970)

1970 · Short film · 22 min

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Synopsis

This cautionary 1970 film produced by Studio Caf in Czechoslovakia, looks at the effects and possible benefits of LSD. The film showcases pioneering work performed by Miroslav Sajda, a chemist at the Military Research Institute in Hradec Krlov, east Bohemia. After news leaked that the U.S. Army was testing LSD on human subjects, Sajda helped prepare an LSD test on Czechoslovak soldiers to see how well they would perform while under the influence of the drug. He then went on to conduct studies with hundreds of civilians, and collaborated with filmmaker Vclav Hapl to make this film. "Dying of Thirst" ended up being banned by the authorities for almost twenty years. The film follows two people taking LSD, one a test subject and one undergoing psychotherapy. Both hallucinate in various ways with extensive animations attempting to show these hallucinations. The patient undergoing psychotherapy is uncomfortable through the process and ends up drawing her hallucinations in various different paintings, which allow the doctor to analyze the root cause of her psychological qualms. The film thus has a somewhat positive view of the drug when used in a clinical setting; but the film ends on a cautious note warning of drugs as the wrong way to escape the depersonalization of the modern world. 0:08 Main titles “Man isn’t Dying of Thirst”, 0:19 Studio Caf 1970, Produced by Zbynek Bartos and edited by Vaclav Hapl, 1:00 colorful animated sequence, 2:15 a woman in a wheelchair drivers around a…

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Details

Running time
22 minutes
Collection
Ephemeral Films

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