Interview with Maartje Nevejan
Our guest was Maartje Nevejan, award-winning film maker and director of the movie ‘Descending the Mountain’. We interviewed her about her movie, the making off, the use of sound, AI and animation, challenges and hopes in the process.
Film Screening with Q&A on November 8, at Cloud
You can see the film ‘Descending the Mountain’, a movie about a zen master and a neuroscientist in an experiment about psychedelics and meditation, on November 8, at Cloud Amsterdam.
Join us for the screening, followed by a Q&A with Maartje Nevejan and conversations over drinks.
Maartje Nevejan, director of ‘Descending the Mountain’
Jan: So could you start off by introducing yourself?
Maartje: Hi, I'm Maartje Nevejan. I'm the director of the film Descending the Mountain.
Jan: What inspired you to create a film that combines meditation with psychedelics?
Maartje: Well, it wasn't my idea. It was the idea of a scientist and a Zen master. Together, they developed this experiment to conduct a psychedelic retreat in a monastic setting. This hadn’t been done in 50 years because, as we all know, it was forbidden because of Nixon. They felt it was time, after 50 years, to try another retreat in a monastic setting. That’s the uniqueness of this experiment. There are other experiments with psychedelics and health, of course, but not with meditation, and not in a monastery with monks.
Jan: What surprised you most about the reactions of the Zen practitioners?
Maartje: Okay, so the Zen practitioners were casted because they needed to have at least 30 years of experience in Zen meditation and to have never used drugs before. The whole idea was to see what would happen if you gave half of the group psilocybin and the other half a placebo. What would happen? Would that mystical experience be enhanced because they were so highly trained? Or would it have no effect for the same reason? They were just curious about how the mind would react, and they measured it with the FMRI.
Jan: How do you hope audiences will feel or think differently after watching Descending the Mountain?
Maartje: Well, the film has been around for two and a half years now, and what I mostly hear is that people fall in love with life again after the film, which I really like. It’s a festival hit and is still being shown at festivals worldwide. It especially resonates with young people who may have a gloomy outlook on life, largely because of all the crises, invented or not. Seeing these two older men discussing the mystical experience of being in awe of life—despite all the drama and the terrible things also happening on this planet—reminds viewers that the Earth is an extremely beautiful blue dot. That is as true as all the drama and the wars and the famine and the ecology drama. So, we have to live with both. This film explores the magic, the magical quality of life.
Jan: The film uses animation and sound in innovative ways. How do these elements contribute to the storytelling?
Maartje: The soundscape is very important to the film. We had so much fun creating it because we had to invent sounds for Mother Earth, mycelium, and other things you can't normally see or hear. Initially, we had a composer working on soundscapes, but it didn’t work out. So we decided to experiment in a sound studio. We placed highly sensitive microphones on our own bodies, and what you hear in many scenes is actually our own gut, heartbeat, or breath. We used our bodies - the inside of our bodies - to create a soundscape. The music is by two composers, Michel Banabila, a Palestinian-Dutch composer, and Cosmo Sheldrake from the Sheldrake brothers.
Jan: How did you decide to use these animations?
Maartje: The animations are from Douwe Dijkstra, who's now world-famous because of his last film, Buurman Abdi. I just loved his work. Because we talk about psychedelics and hallucinations, we needed a playful element. Douwe is very good at making humorous animations that have depth. And so we worked together with him; he uses green screens, so most of the animation is him jumping off a block. There’s a nice little trailer online about him—Douwe Dijkstra. We were just editing and saying, "Oh, can we have a butterfly here? And can you make a little angel there by tomorrow?” That’s how he worked.
That's the animations, we also worked with AI. This was the early days for AI, so it was expensive for just a little bit, but we were excited to use this new medium. Now, I think you could maybe even do some of it on your phone? Well, not quite. We used about 50,000 pictures of mountains, processing it over three weeks through machines. Today, you could probably do it in one day. We had so much fun with the AI. My whole focus as a director is: how can I visualize inner worlds? This is what fascinates me. After being a journalistic documentary maker for a long time, I wanted to see if I could make films about invisible things that shape us as much as the visible world—maybe even more.
Jan: What were the main challenges when actually starting to film this project?
Maartje: The main challenge was that everything happens inside of the people. It’s very boring visually. If you've ever been in a psilocybin session or any psychedelic session, people usually lie down, and you could film them for eight hours just lying there. But what they experience internally may be one of the most important things in their life, next to their children and loved ones. So how can you visualize that? This is where AI came in for us. I selected artwork throughout history that dealt with ecstasy and surrender. So many paintings actually portray mystical experiences, because this is what humans have. If you have a great moment in nature, I mean, all the painters try to portray this. In one culture, you might see it through Christianity, in another, Buddhism, or maybe through abstract paintings. But everyone wants to express those special moments where you suddenly felt a different reality, or feel connected with everything and everyone. How to do that? I collected all kinds of artworks and processed them through machine learning.
Jan: What do you hope the viewers coming on Friday will get out of this?
Maartje: Well, like I said, I hope they go out on the street and think, “Wow, life is fantastic!” Despite Trump, Gaza, Sudan—you know, it's also true. We’re witnesses to horrors, but we’re also witnesses to the beauty and the incredible mysteries of the world we live in, and the life we live. I hope we can give them a little bit of beauty, laughter, and lighthearted mystical experience.