Related Images is a column in which filmmakers invite readers behind the scenes, into their sketchbooks, or otherwise through the looking glass to learn more about their creative processes.
Jorge Jácome’s Shrooms is now showing exclusively on MUBI in many countries.
When someone takes magic mushrooms, the psychoactive compound psilocybin affects the brain's neural activity and can lead to altered states of consciousness and perception. During this time, an individual may have intense sensory experiences, thoughts and emotions, and may perceive the world around them in a different way than they normally would.
In my recent works I have been doing the same thing—imagining and exploring possibilities that challenge conventional assumptions about the natural world, the nature of reality, consciousness, identity, time, and space—as a way to convey perspectives on social, political, and environmental issues.
With Shrooms I was interested in exploring the nature of consciousness, the mind-body interconnection, and the relationship between subjective experience and objective reality as ways of imagining a world with new possibilities.
Shrooms Mish Mash: color gradients; pictures from scouting with DOP Marta Simões; stills of shots that didn’t stay in the final edit; music that was too expensive to use in the film; the posters of the film designed by Joana Lourencinho Carneiro; books that I pretend to have read; articles that inspired the narrative; pictures from my iPhone.