The Cinematheque

Vancouver Premiere

“The surprisingly short leap from radical academic study to lurid exploitation is navigated with wit, sensitivity, and rueful social awareness … Gripping.”

Guy Lodge, Variety

The top-prize winner at Copenhagen’s CPH:DOX in 2018, Marcus Lindeen’s utterly engrossing and insightful documentary recounts the baffling Acali Experiment of 1973, in which 11 perfect strangers drifted across the Atlantic on a cramped, motorless raft as part of a ​“scientific” study on the origins of violence and aggression. Conceived and conducted by radical Mexican anthropologist Santiago Genovés, the controversial social experiment tasked 10 volunteers—six women, four men, each from diverse ethnic, religious, and socio-economic backgrounds—to reach the shores of the Americas on a floating vessel designed for minimal privacy and maximal sexual temptation; i.e., the perfect kindling for conflict! Forty-five years later, Lindeen has replicated the boat on a soundstage and invited the surviving participants to reflect on their 101-day stint aboard the ​“sex raft” (so-called by scandal-stoking tabloids) and their near-murderous relationship with Genovés, the reckless puppet master who took things dangerously too far.

Post-screening discussion with Dale Beyerstein and Jennifer Gibson.

Moderated by Dr. Harry Karlinsky, Clinical Professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of British Columbia.