Neuroscience is all over the news nowadays as technology has finally begun to offer new ways of monitoring what’s going on inside our heads. Yet the very definition of consciousness—and the basis for our self-awareness—remains contentious.
In The Deeper You Go, Milwaukee documentary filmmakers Lora Nigro and Kevin Rutkowski interviewed some of the world’s preeminent neuroscience researchers. They were looking for answers but found more questions instead.
The Deeper You Go is a 30-minute film drawn largely from conversations with participants at a conference sponsored by the University of Arizona’s Center for Consciousness Study. Shooting guerilla style, Nigro, Rutkowski and Los Angeles-based cinematographer Vincent Gaudes caught the speakers on the fly. Many of them are tops in their fields—the “rock stars of consciousness” as Nigro describes them. By that definition, Deepak Chopra is the film’s superstar. But the roster of talking heads includes other names well known to students of neuroscience and related fields, including TED talkers Daniel Dennett, Susan Blackmore and David Chalmers. The filmmakers found that the finest minds in the world cannot agree about the mind. The interviews cover the spectrum of opinion, from materialist to spiritual conceptions of consciousness. The Deeper You Go finds that the final frontier of human knowledge is not in outer space but inside us.
9:30 p.m., Tuesday, Nov. 10 at Plum, 780 N. Jefferson St. Admission is free. Complementary popcorn will be served, bar service is available and a question-and-answer with the filmmakers follows the screening. For more information or to see the trailer, visit thedeeperyougo.com.
