Integral Movie and TV List
The following movies and television series have integrally-informed elements to varying degrees according to testing criteria developed during research on the application of Integral Theory to cinematic media theory and practice. According to this research, a cinematic work is deemed to be integral if elements of the integral stage of development are represented in the cinematic form, style, structure, content, and/or are embedded in the material as a presence or atmosphere. These representations of the elements of the integral stage of development can include:
*Titles are listed in historical order.
(Use the comment area below to ask questions, leave feedback and to suggest movies and television series that are not on the list that you believe should be tested for being an integrally-informed cinematic work)
For more on the application of Integral Theory to the cinematic arts visit the Integral Cinema Project at: www.integralcinema.com
- The exploration and integration of multiple evolving dimensions and perspectives of lesser and greater depth and span;
- The concretion of abstract and interior dimensions and perspectives, such as time and interiority, in the service of evolutionary growth and development;
- An evolutionary story, event, and/or character progression that is given greater than or equal emphasis to conflict resolution, with progression developing vertically through at least three stages or levels of development;
- The evolutionary impulse as a driving force or causality pattern;
- The valuing of truth that is qualified by evolving perspectival fields;
- And/or a Kosmo-centric circle of care and concern that suggests an awareness, integration, and embracing of all of existence.
*Titles are listed in historical order.
(Use the comment area below to ask questions, leave feedback and to suggest movies and television series that are not on the list that you believe should be tested for being an integrally-informed cinematic work)
For more on the application of Integral Theory to the cinematic arts visit the Integral Cinema Project at: www.integralcinema.com
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- DirectorGermaine DulacStarsAlex AllinLucien BatailleGenica AthanasiouObsessed with a general's woman, a clergyman has strange visions of death and lust, struggling against his own eroticism.The very first Integral Film by Germaine Dulac. Many years ahead of its time.
- DirectorOrson WellesStarsOrson WellesJoseph CottenDorothy ComingoreFollowing the death of publishing tycoon Charles Foster Kane, reporters scramble to uncover the meaning of his final utterance: 'Rosebud.'This cinematic masterpiece has hints of the emergence of integral cinematic style and structure into a more main stream form as it traces the evolution of an individual life and explores how our primal wound can both propel us up the ladder of human development while also undermining and regressing us at the same time. While the films main character falls far short of the higher stages of development, the filmmaker, Orson Welles, elevates us the audience into a higher level of perception as we are cinematically raised up into the integral dimensions of a deeply integrating and witnessing consciousness.
- DirectorEdmund GouldingStarsTyrone PowerGene TierneyJohn PayneAn adventuresome young man goes off to find himself and loses his socialite fiancée in the process. But when he returns 10 years later, she will stop at nothing to get him back, even though she is already married.Adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham's classic tale of a young man in search of the meaning of existence and his evolutionary journey toward a higher and deeper level of being and becoming.
- DirectorFrank CapraStarsJames StewartDonna ReedLionel BarrymoreAn angel is sent from Heaven to help a desperately frustrated businessman by showing him what life would have been like if he had never existed.This Frank Capra Christmas classic is also an early stage integral work that maps how the main character George Bailey (James Stewart) evolves from egocentric to Kosmocentric circles of care and concern in a way that shows us how we can evolve through various stages while also holding onto earlier stage drives and projections. In George's case he holds onto his childhood egoic dream of being a world explorer and do great and big things, all the while not realizing that he was already doing great and big things as he developed throughout his life. A beautiful journey that teaches us that it is often the little things we do in life that end up having the biggest impact in the long run. The film is also told directly from the Kosmocentric witness perspective from the angels watching over him beyond the dimension of the world of form.
- DirectorGeorge SeatonStarsEdmund GwennMaureen O'HaraJohn PayneAfter a divorced New York mother hires a nice old man to play Santa Claus at Macy's, she is startled by his claim to be the genuine article. When his sanity is questioned, a lawyer defends him in court by arguing that he's not mistaken.The quintessential Santa Claus movie of all time, this Christmas classic is perhaps the most magical Santa movie ever and yet it shows no magic directly. The miracles that Santa brings are miracles of consciousness. He is operating at a higher more integral level than everyone else and is able to see how they are trapped in their worldviews and constructs and he gently awakens them to higher dimensions of being and becoming. He is also very human in many ways, sometimes loosing his faith that he can save Christmas, which only adds great depth to the wonderful performance by Edmund Gwenn. At the end we get a hint that this man may indeed be Santa Claus, but we are left with only a sense of standing at the edge of a great Kosmic mystery.
- DirectorAkira KurosawaStarsToshirô MifuneMachiko KyôMasayuki MoriThe rape of a bride and the murder of her samurai husband are recalled from the perspectives of a bandit, the bride, the samurai's ghost and a woodcutter.This profound cinematic masterpiece by famed Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, puts the viewer in the integral witnessing state of being as the film deconstructs relativism and deconstructionism itself.
- DirectorIngmar BergmanStarsVictor SjöströmBibi AnderssonIngrid ThulinAfter living a life marked by coldness, an aging professor is forced to confront the emptiness of his existence.Ingmar Bergman's deeply reflective film exploring the evolution of one man's life through memories, dreams, interactions and self-reflections. Through this process Bergman shows us how generational patterns imprison us and cause evolutionary regression, and how becoming a witness to these greater evolutionary and de-evolutionary patterns can awaken us and help us evolve further.
- CreatorRod SerlingStarsRod SerlingRobert McCordJay OverholtsOrdinary people find themselves in extraordinarily astounding situations, which they each try to solve in a remarkable manner.This classic anthology television series explores the further reaches of our inner and outer world within a Kosmic-witnessing frame for the viewer. We are put in the observer seat at the beginning of every episode through the shows opening that includes both visuals and text spoken by the host and show creator, Rod Serling. And as we observe, the stories, visuals and soundscapes shift us into and out of the observer, witness position and into deeply subjective experiences and expansive existential and philosophical reflections. When you combine the witnessing framing and the expansive reflections you get a taste of the Kosmo-centric Witness perspectival field; in many episodes we, the viewer, can have the sense that we are glimpsing a big picture so big it is beyond our comprehension, that there is a meaningful pattern to it all, to all the dimensions we are observing and the multiple layers of hidden dimensions just beyond our reach, and that there is a much greater intelligence at work.
- DirectorChris MarkerStarsÉtienne BeckerJean NégroniHélène ChatelainThe story of a man forced to explore his memories in the wake of World War III's devastation, told through still images."La Jetée" is a classic and renown avant-garde short using all still images to explore the nature of time, memory, dreams, human nature, the impermanence of the world of form and the evolution of self, culture and world, and in the end touches on the Kosmocentric witness at the edge of life and death.
- DirectorsAndrei TarkovskyEduard AbalovStarsNikolay BurlyaevValentin ZubkovEvgeniy ZharikovDuring WWII, Soviet orphan Ivan Bondarev strikes up a friendship with three sympathetic Soviet officers while working as a scout behind the German lines.This film is the first major cinematic work of Russian filmmaker and theorist Andrei Tarkovsky, whose unique cinematic style, which he calls "sculpting in time," pervades all of his major works and is a masterful integrally-informed capturing of inner and outer experiential realities. With long simple yet complex poetically choreographed shots that allow for a multi-layered unfolding of each successive cinematic moment, along with subtle shifts between narrative, visual, auditory, and temporal dimensions of individual and collective interior and exterior realities, Tarkovsky miraculously appears to be capturing and expressing a lived experiential reality that integrates the multiple dimensions of that reality in a profoundly visceral way. In addition, he seems to have a masterful capacity to capture and orchestrate gross, subtle and causal cinematic energies to create potential transcendental experiences and deep witnessing states in the viewer.
- DirectorFederico FelliniStarsMarcello MastroianniAnouk AiméeClaudia CardinaleA harried movie director retreats into his memories and fantasies.Master Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini's semi-autobiographical cinematic masterpiece is actually a deep integrally-informed exploration of the artist's struggle to tap into and be a channel for the creative force of the universe. Fellini's main character is a famous filmmaker who is in preproduction of a film while being unable to access that creative force. His dreams help him seek for it in the past, in waking life the dreams bleed through and take him on a surreal creative journey to gaining that Kosmocentric witness perspective that feeds the artist's soul.
- CreatorGene RoddenberryStarsWilliam ShatnerLeonard NimoyDeForest KelleyIn the 23rd Century, Captain James T. Kirk and the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise explore the galaxy and defend the United Federation of Planets.Starting with the original Star Trek television series in 1966, through many itinerations up to the current Star Trek: Discovery streaming series, the Star Trek universe has given us a cinematic example of what an Integral moral universe would look like. With its evolutionary-aware Prime Directive and its trans-species post-Capitalist worldview, the Star Trek franchise has been planting integral consciousness seeds for over 50 years. While the episodes of the original series and the many spin-off series and the various theatrical itineration's vary in terms of just how integral they are in form and content, the center of gravity of the Star Trek universe is decidedly integral and evolutionary in heart and spirit, with the most recent works starting with the Star Trek (2009) theatrical reboot up to the current Star Trek: Discovery streaming series becoming much more integral across all expressive domains.
- DirectorAndrei TarkovskyStarsAnatoliy SolonitsynIvan LapikovNikolay GrinkoThe life, times and afflictions of the fifteenth-century Russian iconographer St. Andrei Rublev.This is the second major cinematic work of Russian filmmaker and theorist Andrei Tarkovsky, whose unique cinematic style, which he calls "sculpting in time," pervades all of his major works and is a masterful integrally-informed capturing of inner and outer experiential realities. With long simple yet complex poetically choreographed shots that allow for a multi-layered unfolding of each successive cinematic moment, along with subtle shifts between narrative, visual, auditory, and temporal dimensions of individual and collective interior and exterior realities, Tarkovsky miraculously appears to be capturing and expressing a lived experiential reality that integrates the multiple dimensions of that reality in a profoundly visceral way. In addition, he seems to have a masterful capacity to capture and orchestrate gross, subtle and causal cinematic energies to create potential transcendental experiences and deep witnessing states in the viewer.
- DirectorStanley KubrickStarsKeir DulleaGary LockwoodWilliam SylvesterWhen a mysterious artifact is uncovered on the Moon, a spacecraft manned by two humans and one supercomputer is sent to Jupiter to find its origins.Kubrick's ground-breaking integral/evolutionary cinema masterpiece.
- DirectorAndrei TarkovskyStarsNatalya BondarchukDonatas BanionisJüri JärvetA psychologist is sent to a station orbiting a distant planet in order to discover what has caused the crew to go insane."Solaris" is the third major cinematic work of Russian filmmaker and theorist Andrei Tarkovsky, whose unique cinematic style, which he calls "sculpting in time," pervades all of his major works and is a masterful integrally-informed capturing of inner and outer experiential realities. With long simple yet complex poetically choreographed shots that allow for a multi-layered unfolding of each successive cinematic moment, along with subtle shifts between narrative, visual, auditory, and temporal dimensions of individual and collective interior and exterior realities, Tarkovsky miraculously appears to be capturing and expressing a lived experiential reality that integrates the multiple dimensions of that reality in a profoundly visceral way. In addition, he seems to have a masterful capacity to capture and orchestrate gross, subtle and causal cinematic energies to create potential transcendental experiences and deep witnessing states in the viewer.
- DirectorAndrei TarkovskyStarsMargarita TerekhovaFilipp YankovskiyIgnat DaniltsevA dying man in his forties remembers his past. His childhood, his mother, the war, personal moments and things that tell of the recent history of all the Russian nation."The Mirror" is the fourth major cinematic work of Russian filmmaker and theorist Andrei Tarkovsky, whose unique cinematic style, which he calls "sculpting in time," pervades all of his major works and is a masterful integrally-informed capturing of inner and outer experiential realities. With long simple yet complex poetically choreographed shots that allow for a multi-layered unfolding of each successive cinematic moment, along with subtle shifts between narrative, visual, auditory, and temporal dimensions of individual and collective interior and exterior realities, Tarkovsky miraculously appears to be capturing and expressing a lived experiential reality that integrates the multiple dimensions of that reality in a profoundly visceral way. In addition, he seems to have a masterful capacity to capture and orchestrate gross, subtle and causal cinematic energies to create potential transcendental experiences and deep witnessing states in the viewer.
- DirectorGeorge LucasStarsMark HamillHarrison FordCarrie FisherLuke Skywalker joins forces with a Jedi Knight, a cocky pilot, a Wookiee and two droids to save the galaxy from the Empire's world-destroying battle station, while also attempting to rescue Princess Leia from the mysterious Darth Vader.Star Wars Saga 1-6 (1977-2005) - When taken as a whole and in their intended narrative order, the first six Star Wars films show a full evolutionary and de-evolutionary arc for the character of Anakin Skywalker, aka Darth Vader, from egocentric to Kosmocentric with dark twisting turns and de-evolutionary undercurrents of the deep shadow creating a complex spiral of evolutionary development for the character and the archetypal forces represented by him and his journey. "A New Hope" is the first film in the second trilogy.
- DirectorPeter WeirStarsRichard ChamberlainOlivia HamnettDavid GulpililA Sydney lawyer defends five Aboriginal Persons in a ritualized taboo murder and in the process learns disturbing things about himself and premonitions.A haunting mystical cinematic journey into the heart of aboriginal dreamtime and its evolutionary impact on a non-aboriginal person and the greater world at the crossroads of a great awakening.
- DirectorRobert WiseStarsWilliam ShatnerLeonard NimoyDeForest KelleyWhen an alien spacecraft of enormous power is spotted approaching Earth, Admiral James T. Kirk resumes command of the overhauled USS Enterprise in order to intercept it.The first feature film created from the original Star Trek series brings the original cast and the integrally-informed Star Trek universe to the big screen.
- DirectorAndrei TarkovskyStarsAlisa FreyndlikhAleksandr KaydanovskiyAnatoliy SolonitsynA guide leads two men through an area known as the Zone to find a room that grants wishes."Stalker" is the fifth major cinematic work of Russian filmmaker and theorist Andrei Tarkovsky, whose unique cinematic style, which he calls "sculpting in time," pervades all of his major works and is a masterful integrally-informed capturing of inner and outer experiential realities. With long simple yet complex poetically choreographed shots that allow for a multi-layered unfolding of each successive cinematic moment, along with subtle shifts between narrative, visual, auditory, and temporal dimensions of individual and collective interior and exterior realities, Tarkovsky miraculously appears to be capturing and expressing a lived experiential reality that integrates the multiple dimensions of that reality in a profoundly visceral way. In addition, he seems to have a masterful capacity to capture and orchestrate gross, subtle and causal cinematic energies to create potential transcendental experiences and deep witnessing states in the viewer.
- DirectorIrvin KershnerStarsMark HamillHarrison FordCarrie FisherAfter the Empire overpowers the Rebel Alliance, Luke Skywalker begins training with Jedi Master Yoda, while Darth Vader and bounty hunter Boba Fett pursue his friends across the galaxy.Star Wars Saga 1-6 (1977-2005) - When taken as a whole and in their intended narrative order, the first six Star Wars films show a full evolutionary and de-evolutionary arc for the character of Anakin Skywalker, aka Darth Vader, from egocentric to Kosmocentric with dark twisting turns and de-evolutionary undercurrents of the deep shadow creating a complex spiral of evolutionary development for the character and the archetypal forces represented by him and his journey. "Empire Strikes Back" is the second film in the second trilogy.
- DirectorKen RussellStarsWilliam HurtBlair BrownBob BalabanA psycho-physiologist experiments with drugs and a sensory-deprivation tank and has visions he believes are genetic memories.Wild inner and outer ride into the evolutionary and energetic dimensions of existence.
- DirectorRichard RushStarsPeter O'TooleSteve RailsbackBarbara HersheyA fugitive stumbles onto a movie set just when they need a new stunt man, takes the job as a way to hide out and falls for the leading lady while facing off with his manipulative director.
- DirectorJean-Jacques BeineixStarsWilhelmenia FernandezFrédéric AndréiRoland BertinTwo tapes, two Parisian mob killers, one corrupt policeman, an opera fan, a teenage thief, and the coolest philosopher ever filmed all twist their way through an intricate and stylish French-language thriller."Diva" is a French cult film classic from the early 80s that integrates European and American cinema conventions into a hip uniquely styled hybrid Comedy-Thriller-Romance-Mystical tale. As we go along for the ride of this zeitgeist capturing film, the camera moves the audience from the deeply personal and emotional to the intellectual and philosophical to the big-picture, overview, and kosmo-centric witness position. The young male lead character evolve from ego-centric to ethnocentric to socio-centric circles of care and concern while he navigates through a maze of life threatening and existential "challenges," helped by an older street-wise cosmopolitan kosmo-centric holy man.
- DirectorNicholas MeyerStarsWilliam ShatnerLeonard NimoyDeForest KelleyWith the assistance of the Enterprise crew, Admiral Kirk must stop an old nemesis, Khan Noonien Singh, from using the life-generating Genesis Device as the ultimate weapon.The second feature film created from the original Star Trek series with the original cast, extending the integrally-informed Star Trek universe to the big screen.
