A BODY OF THOUGHT
FEATURE DOCUMENTARY
A Body of Thought is a feature documentary that asks, ‘what if the body isn’t just the mind’s vehicle—but part of the mind itself?’ Weaving history, science, and personal narrative, the story will reframe our understanding of the relationship between body, mind, and consciousness.
For centuries, Western science has treated thinking solely as a cerebral process. New science suggests that thought, emotion, and memory are distributed throughout the entire body. Central is the human heart, traditionally seen as a pump but increasingly understood as a complex sensory system and potential “second brain”. Building on this, the film investigates how consciousness emerges and functions through the brain AND body.
We trace this idea from ancient cultures, where the heart, liver, and gut were seen as seats of emotion and wisdom, through Descartes’ 17th-century separation of mind and body, to the cutting-edge fields of neurocardiology, psychoneuroimmunology, and embodied cognition. With the rise of artificial organs and AI, we explore if machines can think without bodies and if transplanted organs hold onto memories. Through provocative interviews with scientists, historians, and philosophers, A Body of Thought uncovers the intricate systems that form our senses of self.
FAINT LIGHT
Feature documentary
Three scientists are searching for the faintest lights in existence — photons so weak they border on nothing, yet may hold the deepest truths about life and the universe.
Dr. Nirosha Murugan has discovered that living cells emit a continuous, ultraweak light — and that cancer disrupts its signature before any tumour is visible. Dr. Séverine Martini has found that the deep ocean, long assumed dark and empty, is one of the most illuminated environments on Earth, its bioluminescent rhythms encoding the health of the planet's carbon cycle. Dr. Suzanne Staggs is decoding the oldest light in existence — the cosmic microwave background — searching for the fingerprint of the universe's very first moment.
Historian of science Lorraine Daston gives shape to what connects them: each is working in the gap between almost and finally, where the instrument is nearly ready and the only question is whether you can tolerate not knowing long enough to find out.
THE MAN WHO DRANK CANADA DRY
FEATURE FILM
Based on the true story of Canadian snooker icon “Big” Bill Werbeniuk, a player who, in the early 1980s, came out of nowhere to become one of the world’s top-ranked players despite suffering from a hereditary disease that caused his cuing hand to shake uncontrollably. Bill’s solution - alcohol, and lots of it - up to 50 pints of beer in a day to keep himself steady and at the top of his game. After quickly becoming a fan favorite in his adopted homeland of England, his career was abruptly brought to an end after the medication he took to protect his heart from the booze, was summarily banned by the sport’s governing body.