Psychedelic Cinema

Take a trip with us at ACMI this summer with our Psychedelic Cinema program – 1960s and 70s countercultural classic films.

The movement peaked with 1967’s ‘Summer of Love’ in San Francisco. Around 100,000 hippies, beatniks, drifters and figures of the counterculture descended upon Haight-Ashbury, advocating anti-materialism, free love, spiritual enlightenment, hallucinogenic drug use, government questioning and anti-war initiatives. Their brief utopian experiment fuelled myriad parties, protests, theatrical performances and, of course, historic music concerts. By the fall, area resources became overwhelmed and the gathering disbanded with a mock funeral titled Death of Hippie, striking at a now commercialised hippie culture. And by the start of the next decade, the US government declared LSD an illegal ‘Schedule I’ substance, deeming the drug’s potential for abuse too high to allow even medical or scientific exceptions and sending it underground to thrive. Only recently have researchers been able to re-examine the medical potential of LSD in mental health and other therapies.

This film series opens a portal onto the lasting cinematic effects of LSD and its natural counterparts. Among the many areas of society they impacted, hallucinogens also instigated a groundbreaking, vibrant period in both underground and mainstream cinema. With an aim of boosting earnings and maintaining relevance, even Hollywood films grew more radical in content and style than in previous decades. As the studio system bottomed out, psychedelics helped usher in New Hollywood and wilder methods of film production.

– Harvard Film Archive