The Raft (Flotten)

VANCOUVER PREMIERE! The top-prize winner at Copenhagen’s CPH:DOX in 2018, Marcus Lindeen’s utterly engrossing 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 ten volunteers — six women, four men, from diverse ethnic, religious, and socio-economic backgrounds — to float from the Canary Islands to the Americas on a vessel designed for minimal privacy and maximal sexual temptation; i.e., the perfect kindling for conflict! Forty-five years later, Lindeen 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.

Dale Beyerstein is a philosopher who has taught at Malaspina College, Douglas College, Kwantlen College, UBC, and Langara College. He is a co-founder and director-at-large of the B.C. Skeptics.

Jennifer Gibson is a clinical ethicist at Providence Health Care. Her soon-to-be- completed PhD work, on the context of heart failure and end of life in acute practice settings, includes a particular sensitivity to ethics, culture, language, and moral distress.

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