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Want to support this channel and help us preserve old films? Visit Browse our products on Amazon: This cautionary 1970 film produced by Studio Caf in Czechoslovakia, looks at the effects and possible benefits of LSD. The film showcases pioneering work performed by Miroslav Sajda, a chemist at the Military Research Institute in Hradec Krlov, east Bohemia. After news leaked that the U.S. Army was testing LSD on human subjects, Sajda helped prepare an LSD test on Czechoslovak soldiers to see how well they would perform while under the influence of the drug. He then went on to conduct studies with hundreds of civilians, and collaborated with filmmaker Vclav Hapl to make this film. “Dying of Thirst“ ended up being banned by the authorities for almost twenty years. The film follows two people taking LSD, one a test subject and one undergoing psychotherapy. Both hallucinate in various ways with extensive animations attempting to show these hallucinations. The patient undergoing psychotherapy is uncomfortable through the process and ends up drawing her hallucinations in various different paintings, which allow the doctor to analyze the root cause of her psychological qualms. The film thus has a somewhat positive view of the drug when used in a clinical setting; but the film ends on a cautious note warning of drugs as the wrong way to escape the depersonalization of the modern world. 0:08 Main titles “Man isn’t Dying of Thirst”, 0:19 Studio Caf 1970, Produced by Zbynek Bartos and edited by Vaclav Hapl, 1:00 colorful animated sequence, 2:15 a woman in a wheelchair drivers around a fountain, 2:48 people at a mental hospital, 3:49 overview of skyscrapers in a large city and scenes from busy streets, 4:46 woman in the wheelchair driving around the fountain, 5:18 ancient Aztec wall carvings, 5:51 a doctor giving a man LSD to drink, 6:38 man looks at the doctor and begins talking to him after seeing a pattern, 7:11 the man’s vision is being distorted and his hand looks like it turns into a leaf and is followed by various animated patterns, 10:03 the patient comes back and speaks to the doctor, 10:28 man closes his eyes while smoking a cigarette and talking, 10:51 the doctor and a man go on a walk to the window, 11:31 more animated patterns and the fountain reappears, 12:04 a drop of LSD is put into water and is given to a woman patient undergoing psychotherapy, 12:44 the doctor appears in multiple forms and is followed by random footage, 13:39 a man gets out of a wheelchair and is almost hit by an airplane and then killed by an excavator, 14:37 the doctor tries to calm the woman down followed by more animations, 15:10 abstract paintings indicating the results of the woman’s disorder, 15:48 the fountain returns followed by more animations, 16:24 different paintings created by patients who were on LSD, 17:01 progression of a photograph as painted by someone on LSD, 17:28 animations of different historical drug rituals, 18:11 hippies dancing together at a party, 18:43 reversed footage of aircraft dropping bombs on buildings, 19:15 more colorful animations, 19:58 a Beatles concert interjected with footage of the depersonalization of the modern world including people fighting at hockey matches, starving people, cars being sold, corpses being buried in mass graves, and a nuclear bomb exploding, 21:42 return to the mental hospital with the same patients from the start of the film, 22:23 a busy city with people walking, 22:41 “The End” We encourage viewers to add comments and, especially, to provide additional information about our videos by adding a comment! See something interesting? Tell people what it is and what they can see by writing something for example: “01:00:12:00 -- President Roosevelt is seen meeting with Winston Churchill at the Quebec Conference.“ This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD, 2k and 4k. For more information visit
