| Heartbeat in the Brain | |
|---|---|
 Screenshots from the film | |
| Directed by | Amanda Feilding |
| Produced by | Amanda Feilding, Joseph Mellen |
| Starring | Amanda Feilding |
| Narrated by | Amanda Feilding |
Release date |
|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Budget | Unknown |
Heartbeat in the Brain is a 1970 documentary film produced and directed by Amanda Feilding, an advocate of trepanation. [1] It was filmed by Joseph Mellen.
In the film, Feilding, a 27-year-old student at the time, drills a hole in her forehead with a dentist's drill. In the documentary, surgical scenes alternate with motion studies of Feilding's pet pigeon Birdie. [2]
In 1978, Feilding screened the movie at the Suydam Gallery in New York. More than one audience member fainted during the climax. [1]
The 1998 documentary A Hole in the Head contains footage from Heartbeat in the Brain. [3]
The documentary, long believed to be lost, was publicly screened at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London on 28 April 2011. [4]
Trepanning, also known as trepanation, trephination, trephining or making a burr hole, is a surgical intervention in which a hole is drilled or scraped into the human skull. The intentional perforation of the cranium exposes the dura mater to treat health problems related to intracranial diseases or release pressured blood buildup from an injury. It may also refer to any "burr" hole created through other body surfaces, including nail beds. A trephine is an instrument used for cutting out a round piece of skull bone to relieve pressure beneath a surface.
Sir Steve Rodney McQueen is a British film director, film producer, screenwriter, and video artist. Known for directing films that deal with intense subject matters, he has received several awards including an Academy Award, two BAFTA Awards and a Golden Globe Award. He was honoured with the BFI Fellowship in 2016 and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2020 for services to art and film. In 2014, he was included in Time magazine's annual Time 100 list of the "most influential people in the world".
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Amanda Claire Marian Charteris, Countess of Wemyss and March, also known as Amanda Feilding, is an English drug policy reformer, lobbyist, and research coordinator. In 1998, she founded the Foundation to Further Consciousness, later renamed to the Beckley Foundation, a charitable trust which initiates, directs, and supports neuroscientific and clinical research into the effects of psychoactive substances on the brain and cognition. She has also co-authored over 50 papers published in peer-reviewed journals, according to the Foundation. The central aim of her research is to investigate new avenues of treatment for such mental illnesses as depression, anxiety, and addiction, as well as to explore methods of enhancing well-being and creativity.
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Hugo Bart Huges was a Dutch librarian and proponent of trepanation. He attended medical school at the University of Amsterdam, but was refused a degree due to his advocacy of LSD research and naming his daughter "Maria Juana". In 1964 he published "The Mechanism of Brainbloodvolume ('BBV')", a scroll in which he proposed that trepanation could be used to enhance brain functionality by balancing the proportion of blood and cerebral spinal fluid. Huges believed that, when mankind began to walk upright, our brains drained of blood and that trepanation allowed the blood to better flow in and out of the brain, causing a permanent "high". Using a foot-operated electric dentist drill, Huges drilled a hole in his skull on 6 January 1965. He also published "Trepanation: A Cure for Psychosis", in which he expanded upon his theory, and an autobiography, The Book With The Hole, in 1972.
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