Cool video, posted at Mind Hacks (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License). About the film:

Info: facebook.com/narcosebluenery

Deep water freediving exposes its practitioners to a form of narcosis, which induces several symptoms, among which a feeling of euphoria and levity that earned this phenomenon its nickname of “raptures of the deep”. The short film relates the interior journey of Guillaume Néry, the apnea world champion, during one of his deep water dives. It draws its inspiration from his physical experience and the narrative of his hallucinations.

Beautiful imagery.

Hallucinating in the Deep Waters of Consciousness

Posted by Vaughan Bell | August 4, 2014

On Saturday I curated a series of short films about other inner worlds, altered states and the extremes of mental health at London’s Shuffle Festival. I discovered one of the films literally a couple of days before the event, and it completely blew me away.

Narcose is a French documentary about a dive by world champion free diver Guillaume Néry. It documents, in real time, a five minute dive from a single breath and the hallucinations he experiences due to carbon dioxide narcosis.



Firstly, the film is visually stunning. A masterpiece of composition, light and framing.

Secondly, it’s technically brilliant. The director presumably thought ‘what can we do when we have access to a community of free divers, who can hold their breath under water for minutes at a time?’ It turns out, you can create stunning underwater scenes with a cast of apparently water-dwelling humans.

But most importantly it is a sublime depiction of Néry’s enchanted world where the boundaries between inner and outer perception become entirely porous. It is perhaps the greatest depiction of hallucinations I’ve seen on film.

Darken the room, watch it on as big a screen as possible and immerse yourself.

~ Link to Narcose on Vimeo.