IMAGEs du MONdE VIsIONNAIRE (1963)

Images Du Monde Visionnaire is the result of a collaboration between the film maker Eric Duvivier and the Belgian writer, painter and mystic Henri Michaux. It was produced by the Swiss pharmaceutical company Sandoz as an educational tool to demonstrate the visual effects of mescaline and hashish. The film was based on Michaux’s experiences with psychedelics, which he documented in his books. In Michaux’s opinion, the film failed to represent the repetitive motion of the hallucinations that he experienced under the influence of mescaline. But the film shares many traits with some of the more interesting efforts in avant-garde film making of its time.

Henri Michaux was a distinctive Belgian-born poet, writer and painter. His works are imbued with a sense of alienation: not only from others, but from himself as well.

Eric Duvivier has made about 500 educational films, most of them concerning psychiatrics. Through his films, Duvivier explores the most obscure zones of the human mind – what Michaux labeled ‘l’espace du dedans’ (the inner space).