''Electronic Awakening'' is a 2011 American

documentary film A documentary film (often described simply as a documentary) is a nonfiction Film, motion picture intended to "document reality, primarily for instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". The American author and ...

which investigates the spiritual history of

electronic music Electronic music broadly is a group of music genres that employ electronic musical instruments, circuitry-based music technology and software, or general-purpose electronics (such as personal computers) in its creation. It includes both music ...

culture. Told from an ethnographic perspective, the film explores the international

Electronic Dance Music Electronic dance music (EDM), also referred to as dance music or club music, is a broad range of percussive electronic music genres originally made for nightclubs, raves, and List of electronic dance music festivals, festivals. It is generally ...

(EDM) phenomenon as the re-emergence of shamanic ritual. In addition to interviewing people whose lives were changed by the claimed transcendent experiences on the dancefloor, anthropologist and film’s creator AC Johner ponders the cause of this mind-altering effect and suggests that the repetitive, mathematically perfect rhythms and oscillations of EDM have the power to create a communal '' hive mind''. The electronic beatscape propelled by the emergence in the late 1980s and early 1990s of something new and freshly synched. The primary emphasis of the documentary is the deeply spiritual basis of the cultures and practices that have developed around these parties, particularly trance music and the possibilities this spirituality might offer for ravers and the world in general. It is one of the first full-length documentaries to uncover the spiritual and transformational elements of EDM culture as a central theme.

Production

Filming began in August 2006 in the form of university research, under a grant from

Appalachian State University Appalachian State University (), or App State, is a Public university, public research university in Boone, North Carolina, United States. It was founded as a normal school, teachers' college in 1899 by brothers B. B. and D. D. Dougherty and th ...

. The first footage collected were recorded interviews for director AC Johner’s thesis work in anthropology. With growing popularity of EDM and the collected research, AC Johner continued filming over a period of 5 years featuring such Transformational festivals as

Burning Man Burning Man is a week-long large-scale desert event focused on "community, art, self-expression, and self-reliance" held annually in the Western United States. The event's name comes from its ceremony on the penultimate night of the event: the ...

Earthdance The Earthdance Global Peace Party is the world's largest underground music and dance event for peace. Held annually since 1997, the event features hundreds of music artists, DJs, dancers, and speakers at local Earthdance events around the world, o ...

Boom Festival BOOM Festival was a rock music festival held annually throughout SFR Yugoslavia between 1971 and 1978. The festival was held for the first time in 1971 in Maribor and for the last time in 1978 in Novi Sad. The festival featured numerous prominent ...

, and Shambala Festival. In 2008, Johner licensed the project with his company, Federation of Earth Productions LLC. By the start of post-production over 200 hours of footage had been collected, 100 of which were formal interviews. In 2010, a successful Kickstarter campaign granted Johner finishing funds as well as a partnership with Keyframe-Entertainment to complete production.

Post production

Post-production was carried out under AC Johner's Federation Of Earth Productions LLC. It also involved collaboration with Advanced Multimedia Operatives (AMMO), Julian Reyes of Keyframe-Entertainment joining as an executive producer, and Drew Martinez of Beechwood Cottage Films as editor. All editing, on-line, titles and effects were utilizing

Final Cut Pro Final Cut Pro (often abbreviated FCP or FCPX) is a professional non-linear video-editing application initially developed by Macromedia, and, since 1998, by Apple as part of its pro apps collection. Final Cut Pro allows users to import, edit, a ...

Adobe After Effects Adobe After Effects is a digital visual effects, motion graphics, and compositing application developed by Adobe Inc.; it is used for animation and in the post-production process of film making, video games and television production. Amo ...

, and Motion.

Release

''Electronic Awakening'' showed at Egyptian Theater in

Hollywood Hollywood usually refers to: * Hollywood, Los Angeles, a neighborhood in California * Hollywood, a metonym for the cinema of the United States Hollywood may also refer to: Places United States * Hollywood District (disambiguation) * Hollywood ...

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

, in March 2012. While never given an official theatrical release, it quickly gained popularity within the electronic music community, spawning independent screenings of the film at raves and music festivals all over the world. The film was released world-wide on Video-on-Demand through

Gravitas Ventures Gravitas Ventures is an American film distribution company owned by Shout! Studios. The company was founded by Nolan Gallagher in Los Angeles in 2006, and moved its headquarters from Los Angeles to Cleveland in 2019. It focuses on the distribu ...

on December 21, 2012. The DVD was released by

North Atlantic Books North Atlantic Books is a non-profit, independent publisher based in Berkeley, California, United States. Distributed by Penguin Random House Publisher Services, North Atlantic Books is a mission-driven social justice-oriented publisher. Founded ...

and

Random House Random House is an imprint and publishing group of Penguin Random House. Founded in 1927 by businessmen Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer as an imprint of Modern Library, it quickly overtook Modern Library as the parent imprint. Over the foll ...

Cast

Daniel Pinchbeck Daniel Pinchbeck is an American author and journalist. His books include '' Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism'', the New York Times best seller ''2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl'', ''Notes f ...

Alex Grey Alex Grey (born November 29, 1953) is an American visual artist, author, teacher, and Vajrayana practitioner known for creating spiritual and psychedelic artwork such as his 21-painting ''Sacred Mirrors'' series. He works in multiple forms includi ...

Ken Kesey Ken Elton Kesey (; September 17, 1935 – November 10, 2001) was an American novelist, essayist and Counterculture of the 1960s, countercultural figure. He considered himself a link between the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the hippies o ...

Goa Gil Goa Gil (born Gilbert Levey, October 11, 1951 – October 26, 2023) was an American musician, DJ, remixer, and party organizer. He was one of the founders of the Goa trance and psytrance movement in electronic music. Biography Gilbert Levey wa ...

Terence McKenna Terence Kemp McKenna (November 16, 1946–April 3, 2000) was an American ethnobotanist and mystic who advocated for the responsible use of naturally occurring psychedelic plants and mushrooms. He spoke and wrote about a variety of subjects, ...

Erik Davis Erik Davis (born June 12, 1967) is an American writer, scholar, journalist and public speaker whose writings have ranged from rock criticism to cultural analysis to creative explorations of esoteric mysticism. He is perhaps best known for his b ...

Starhawk Starhawk (born Miriam Simos on June 17, 1951) is an American feminist and writer. She is known as a theorist of feminist neopaganism and ecofeminism. In 2013, she was listed in Watkins' ''Mind Body Spirit'' magazine as one of the 100 Most Spir ...

* Dr. Robin Sylvan

Soundtrack

Shpongle Shpongle is a psychedelic music, psychedelic electronic music project from England that formed in 1996. The group includes Hallucinogen (musician), Simon Posford and Raja Ram (musician), Raja Ram (one of three in The Infinity Project). The duo ...

The Crystal Method The Crystal Method is an American electronic music act formed in Las Vegas Valley, Las Vegas, Nevada, by Ken Jordan and Scott Kirkland in 1993. They were pioneers of the big beat genre and their music has appeared in numerous TV shows, films, v ...

* Phutureprimitive *

Vibrasphere Vibrasphere was a progressive trance music duo from Uppsala, Sweden and Brussels, Belgium. Its founding members were Rickard Berglöf, Robert Elster and Pierre Baekelmans. History Berglöf was previously a member of early Goa group Subcouds ...

Solar Fields Magnus Birgersson, better known by his stage name Solar Fields, is a Swedish electronic music artist. As of 2014, he has released fifteen albums, and has also scored all interactive in-game music for the Electronic Arts game ''Mirror's Edge'' a ...

* Random Rab

References

External links

* {{IMDb title, 2038260
Piquenewsmagazine.com

Theuntz.com

2011 documentary films Documentary films about electronic music and musicians 2011 films American documentary films 2010s English-language films 2010s American films English-language documentary films