Terrestrials plot
"Downloading Timothy Leary"
In 'The Terrestrials', the American-Dutch filmmaker René Daalder shuttles back and forth between the psychedelic sixties and the modern world of cyberspace. A group of students from California's Santa Cruz University wants to unlock the archive of the famous counter-culture icon Timothy Leary (1920-1996) for today's internet generation. Archive material and new recordings partly made by the students themselves alternate in this 'sci-fi' documentary. Dr Leary's solidified charisma still seems to have a hold on today's inquisitive youth. Leary presented himself as a prophet of the psychedelic experience - to be aroused with the synthetic drug LSD - that would bring man to a higher consciousness. That would overthrow the establishment and then love and peace would rule the world. In later years, Leary began to proclaim that the PC and the Internet was better stuff than LSD, though he warned that a computer can crash just like the human brain. Despite all the flashbacks, 'The Terrestrials' is mainly about the search of modern young people for themselves, who in their urge to experiment sometimes exceed the limits of their own mental health.