Better Living Through Chemistry

Sep 21, 2021

1h 27m

★ 0.0

Overview

In the 1970s, Dr. Alexander “Sasha” Shulgin significantly contributed to the development and psychopharmaceutical use of MDMA: a catalyst to personal doors entombed or unknown. His widow, co-author, and research partner, Ann—alongside friends, family, and colleagues—gives a guided tour of their life and laboratory, reflecting on how risks and revelations opened a world of compound enlightenment. Stippled with spirituality, sadness, and skepticism, the Shulgins’ chemical love story examines the power of psychedelic psychotherapy, sacred alchemy, and challenging the path of misunderstood resistance.

Genres

Documentary

Production Companies

Samuel Goldwyn Films

Better Living Through Film

Better Living Through Chemistry Trailers

Cast

Self

Ann Shulgin

Self

Alexander Shulgin

Self

Tania Manning

Self

Greg Manning

Self - Ann's Son

Brian Perry

Self

Renee Reeser Zelnick

Self

Mariavittoria Mangini

Self

Jennifer Dumpert

Self

Fire Erowid

Self

Earth Erowid

Self

David E. Presti

Self

Sunny Heartsong

A New Understanding explores the treatment of end-of-life anxiety in terminally ill cancer patients using psilocybin, a psychoactive compound found in some mushrooms, to facilitate deeply spiritual experiences. The documentary explores the confluence of science and spirituality in the first psychedelic research studies since the 1970s with terminally ill patients. As a society we devote a great deal of attention to treating cancer, but very little to treating the human being who is dying of cancer.

6.7

Il mio nome è Battaglia

Oct 1, 2024

No overview available.

0.0

LSD made in ČSSR

Oct 6, 2015

No overview available.

8.0

Balavoine, enquête sur un destin tragique

Nov 8, 2022

No overview available.

7.2

Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films

Oct 6, 2014

A documentary about the rise and fall of the Cannon Film Group, the legendary independent film company helmed by Israeli cousins Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus.

6.6

Salman Rushdie: Death on a Trail

Jan 8, 2019

An intimate portrait, in his own words, of the Indian writer Salman Rushdie, author of The Satanic Verses (1988), thirty years after the fatwa uttered by the Iranian Ayatollah Khomeini: his youth in multicultural Bombay, his life in England, his many years of forced hiding, his thoughts on President Trump's United States of America.

No Image Available

0.0

La Bréa

Invalid Date

Documentary about Brazilian actress Sandra Bréa.

7.0

The Writing on the Wall

Dec 11, 1986

"In this half-hour documentary, Producer Sandra King provides an intimate portrait of a public phenomenon: Graffiti. Over an 18 month period, King and her crew followed the teenage members of a graffiti 'crew,' Vandals on the Street, as they painted and rapped and moved through the streets of downtown Newark. What emerges is a unique glimpse behind the 'tags' at the kind of inner city kids who write on walls, but who also make art; who create out of wedlock children, but who also form binding relationships; who drop out of school and never read a book, but who create their own brand of poetry through the medium of 'rap.'

8.0

Slow, une histoire d'amour

Jan 18, 2024

No overview available.

0.0

Napalm - the sound of the industrial city

Mar 4, 2013

Directed by journalist Ricardo Alexandre, the documentary tells the story of the Napalm nightclub, responsible for the new wave and post-punk generation in Sao Paulo. Mixing live shows, cutting-edge DJing and videos in its "modern" internal television system, the venue quickly became a meeting point for young people who shaped the grayer side of Brazilian rock in the 80s.

0.0

Maria's Story

Jan 18, 1991

It is El Salvador, 1989, three years before the end of a brutal civil war that took 75,000 lives. Maria Serrano, wife, mother, and guerrilla leader is on the front lines of the battle for her people and her country. With unprecedented access to FMLN guerrilla camps, the filmmakers dramatically chronicle Maria's daily life in the war.

8.0

La Génération des Enfants du rock

Feb 16, 2024

No overview available.

5.5

LSD: The Beyond Within

Jan 1, 1986

This refreshingly frank and impartial study of the discovery and development of the notorious hallucinogenic drug is notably free of moral judgmental, and features contributions from such legendary heroes of psychedelia as Albert Hoffman - the Swiss scientist who discovered the drug - Aldous Huxley - author of 'The Doors of Perception' - Ken Kesey - author of 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

0.0

The Psychedelic Experience

Jan 23, 1965

Experimental movie, where a man comes home and experiences LSD. His kaleidoscopic visions follow, with readings inspired by the Tibethan Book of the Dead.

8.0

Jack Parsons: Jet Propelled Antichrist

Jan 1, 2006

Jack Parsons: Jet Propelled Antichrist is a story about one of the fathers of modern rocketry and a founder of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) which as part of NASA still leads the way in the development of rockets and the exploration of space. He was also an occultist, a sorcerer and a magus. The infamous magician Aleister Crowley the self-proclaimed Great Beast called him son. He called himself ‘The Antichrist’ and was repeatedly investigated by the FBI. At the age of 38 Parsons died in a mysterious explosion that made headlines around the US. Officially it was a tragic scientific accident — other interpretations of the event persist to this day.

8.0

Stronger Than a Bullet

Nov 20, 2017

Iran, January 16th, 1979. Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi flees after being overthrown. Ayatollah Khomeini returns to Tehran and proclaims the Islamic Republic on April 1st, 1979. In the same year, Saddam Hussein seizes power in Iraq and, after several border skirmishes, attacks Iran on September 22nd, 1980, initiating a cruel war that will last eight years. Since its outbreak, correspondent Saeid Sadeghi documented it from its beginning to its bitter end.

0.0

A Table of Our Own

Invalid Date

A groundbreaking new documentary that illuminates the untold stories, struggles, and triumphs of Black people in the psychedelic therapy movement. Interest in psychedelic medicine has exploded in recent years, spurred by a resurgence of research and high-profile advocates. Despite the fact that indigenous Black and Brown people have been using these plant medicines for centuries, psychedelic medicine remains a fundamentally white space.

9.0

L'Adieu à Solférino

Feb 16, 2019

No overview available.

8.7

Farewell, the spy who loved France

Oct 24, 2019

"The Farewell Affair" is one of the greatest espionage stories of the Cold War that will result in the accelerated fall of the USSR. It involves Vladimir Vetrov, a KGB agent put in the closet, who decides to contact the DST and deliver several lists of technological and scientific agents and secrets, which the KGB has been stealing from the countries of the Western Blocs for decades.

7.5

Sheila, toutes ces vies-là

Dec 24, 2022

The portrait of a woman who remembers. Sheila tells the story of Sheila, without concessions or evasions. Her childhood, her parents, her beginnings, the rumors, her love affairs, her marriage, her son, her successes, her farewells, her return, her mourning. The journey of an extraordinary popular icon who never stopped fighting. The courage of an artist who never gives up. "Sheila, toutes ces vies-là" is also a journey through time. 60 years of pop music, punctuated by numerous archives, personal films, timeless hits and illustrations by Marc-Antoine Coulon. But also 60 years of fashion, through a legendary wardrobe (her TV show outfits) that Sheila invites us to rediscover.