Pubdate: Thu, 02 Aug 2007 Source: Vancouver Sun (CN BC) c5-ebf9-410e-ab10-88ea1e6d4133 Copyright: 2007 The Vancouver Sun Contact: http://www.canada.com/vancouver/vancouversun/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/477 Author: Kevin Griffin YOUTH CULTURE PAVED A PSYCHEDELIC PATH Series Of Films Playing At Pacific Cinematheque Takes A Trippy Step Back In Time When most people think about the 1960s, the cool places that come to mind are neighbourhoods such as California's Berkeley and San Francisco's Haight Ashbury and Kitsilano's West Fourth. But there was a place a long, long way from the mainstream of everything that played a key role in paving the psychedelic path followed by the youth culture of the ' 60s. The place was Saskatchewan Hospital in Weyburn. This is no practical joke. From the early 1950s to 1961, the big blocky institutionallooking hospital on the Prairies was the world's centre for the investigation into the link between psychedelics, especially LSD ( lysergic acid diethylamide), and schizophrenia. Long before Timothy Leary coined the phrase " Turn on, tune in, drop out," Humphrey Osmond was the head of a team doing cutting edge research into the boundaries of human consciousness. While mainstream psychiatry at the time believed schizophrenia was entirely psychological in origin, Osmond promoted the radical idea that it was caused by chemical imbalances in the brain -- by the body creating its own hallucinogens. By the time he arrived in Saskatchewan, Osmond, a British psychiatrist, had already tried mescaline, believing it allowed him to temporarily experience the world as a schizophrenic. Hired as the hospital's superintendent in 1951, Osmond later hired psychiatrists Abram Hoffer and Duncan Blewett, who gathered and tested hallucinogens from around the world. Osmond supplied writer Aldous Huxley with mescaline, a trip that led to his book The Doors of Perception. In a poem explaining his experience, Huxley wrote " To make this mundane world sublime take half a gram of phanerothyme" ( phanerothyme is a synonym for a hallucinogen). Osmond responded with " To fall in hell or soar angelic, you'll need a pinch of psychedelic," coining the term psychedelic ( soul-opening) and making himself forever linked to a word that became synonymous with the 1960s. Among Osmond's therapeutic discoveries was that LSD played a significant role in helping people kick their alcohol abuse problems. More importantly, Osmond and his researchers discovered that LSD opened the doors of human perception and consciousness like nothing else. It was said that one afternoon on LSD was better than 15 years in therapy. Although there were clear therapeutic and personal benefits to the drug, society wasn't ready for a substance that broke down social barriers and brought personal awareness and spiritual insight. As LSD leaked out of the research labs and onto the tongues of the public, the usual sources of The Psychedelic Pioneers is one of many feature films and documentaries being shown at Pacific Cinematheque during its Summer of Love series, which starts Friday and runs until Aug. 16. The Psychedelic Pioneers is being shown Wednesday, Aug. 8 at 7: 30 p. m. It will be preceded by two shorts: Sal Mineo narrating LSD: Insight or Insanity?, a scare film about the dangers of LSD, and LSD: The Trip to Where?, which includes Leary talking about the difference between a good and bad trip on acid. Curated by Videomatica's Graham Peat and Jim Sinclair, with help from Kier-la Janisse, the Summer of Love series includes many rarely seen films such as The Trip, described as one of Hollywood's most accurate portrayals of what it's like to take LSD, Psych- Out, set in Haight- Ashbury and starring Susan Strasberg, Dean Stockwell, Jack Nicholson and Bruce Dern, and Something's Happening a. k. a. Hippie Revolt, a cinema verite look at youth culture in San Francisco and Los Angeles in 1966- 67. The focus shifts to B. C. for Stan Fox Presents: Summer of Love: The Vancouver Scene on Thursday, Aug. 16 at 7: 30 p. m. Fox, a former CBC producer and director who recorded as much of the scene as he could, will present a selection of rare vintage films from the era that include What Happened Last Summer, a CBC program about the hippies in Kitsilano, and The Be- In, a documentary about the March 26, 1967 happening in Stanley Park. The Be- In captures the utterly innocent charm of young people who truly wanted to change the world. The 40th anniversary of the Summer of Love culminates with a street festival on West Fourth Avenue on Saturday, Aug. 18. - --- MAP posted-by: Derek