ELECTRONIC AWAKENING

Documentary Film Competition

Director Andrew Johner

Brazil/USA, 2011, 90 minutes, color

EXHIBITION PREMIERE: January 20, 2012

WATCH FULL FILM

SYNOPSIS:

In Electronic Awakening, director Andrew Johner lifts the veil on an underground spiritual movement that has developed within electronic music cultures worldwide. This close encounter with the mysticism of rave questions the origin of religion, and offers insight into the future of man's spirituality. It investigates this culture's significance to the prophecies of 2012, and how this bizarre and sacral relationship to electronic music has evolved the group overtime, and where it seems to be leading them.

CAST AND CREDITS:

Director: Andrew Johner

Producer: Andrew Johner

Executive Producer: Julian Reyes

Official Site: electronicawakening.com

ELECTRONIC AWAKENING

Documentary Film Competition

Director Andrew Johner, Brazil/USA, 2011, 90 min, color

WATCH FULL FILM

OVERVIEW:

Electronic Awakening is an ethnographic documentary addressing the religious dimensions of electronic dance music cultures. Many members of the culture claim that their attendance at these events became host of their personal spirituality. The effect of these transcendental experiences are evident through a close analysis of the culture’s collective evolution over the past decade. Many electronic dance communities now claim their current underground party lifestyle has little to do with entertainment, and more to do with a redefinition of experiencing 'God' through material techniques. This underground phenomena is becoming increasingly popular all over the world. This is the first film of its kind to take an academic approach to the subject. Helmed by an anthropologist, the scope and the breadth of the culture as well as its proclaimed spiritual ethnos are investigated through first-hand interviews with scholars, critics, participants, musical artists, and socio-cultural commentators.

Electronic Awakening seeks to lift the veil of these mysterious events and rituals to reveal the true nature of this phenomenon and its practitioners. The tenets of rave culture, the spiritual components of electronic dance music, and the collective experience of its ‘practitioners’ at gatherings, will be explored in depth, seeking to reveal both the truths of this culture and its parallels to other movements and histories across the world and across time.

FULL SUMMARY:

Electronic Awakening investigates a spiritual movement that has emerged within dance music cultures all over the world. The entirety of the film describes the relationship between music and consciousness, the metaphysics of mythology, and the spiritual experience of ‘God,’ as revealed through the cultural and ritualistic elements of Rave Culture. In congruence with this information, the film quantifies the phenomena of electronic dance music culture as an emerging form of spiritual practice previously unrepresented by other human groups as a spiritual technology engaging mass groups of people with a collective experience of the sacred. The epic culmination of the film reveals from an ethnographic standpoint how all of this information coincides with our planet’s alignment in the center of the galaxy on December 21, 2012, and investigates why the Rave Culture is preparing for a massive synchronized party on that date. 

The experience of a Rave party has been described as a spiritually transforming experience that participants claim has changed their lives forever. Over the years, scholars have documented an evolution within the culture itself that provides evidence that this ‘transformational experience’ may be unprecedented by any other traditional source of spirituality. Even the nature of the music itself represents something unparalleled in our time, as a merging of our mathematical system with the human consciousness. This relationship is being given more and more attention as realms of scientific discovery unearth new data on quantum mechanics. 

Very little media coverage has investigated and disclosed the spiritual dimension of this culture, though many participants claim that the transcendental phenomena is what the culture is based upon. Scholars and journalists who have approached this subject matter have had difficulty finding a clear way to translate and explain the revelations experienced by Ravers on the dance floor to those who have never experienced it first hand. This trans-global culture however, has been around for nearly an eon, yet remains ambiguous to outsiders.

In this compelling documentary, the director Andrew John er sets out to investigate the true spiritual nature of the electronic dance music scene. For over two years he has been traveling to parties and festivals all over the world looking for a clear and direct way to define its mysticism. Through a plethora of interviews with members of the Rave community, shamanic practitioners, anthropologists, psychologists, ethnomusicologists, spiritual leaders, and people who claim to be in communication with extra-terrestrials, he has woven the answer into a concise 90 minute film.

Following the interpretation of its ritual nature, the film investigates the cultural transformation that has transpired from this technical approach to religious phenomena in intentional Rave communities. 

Over the past decade, the culture has spun vast networks of communities up and down the west coast that are intentionally focusing the efforts of their communities and party practices on the institution of an open-sourced belief system. In this attempt, they have developed their own mythology and organized rituals.

Director Andrew John er was a graduate student in anthropology when he first began his ethnographic work with electronic music culture. He attended his first party when he began filming for the project, and has since become engrossed in the scene compiling over four years of field experience still retaining an objectable ‘outside’ perspective on the inside story. He is now dedicated to bringing the truth of the culture’s practices to light through the creation of this documentary and its ancillary products. 
Several interviews with ‘scene’ celebrities and top scholars are featured, including interviews with Alex Grey, Daniel Pinchbeck, Goa Gil, Terrance Mckenna, Ken Kesey, Starhawk, and Bob Frissell.