Films have a definite charm. And the synergistic impact of multiple visual and auditory skills of music, dialogue, lighting, camera angles, sound effects, enables a film to bypass ordinary defensive censors in a viewer. These filmic "effects" get to hidden or unnoticed cognitions by way of evoked emotions, or vice versa, and often get there more easily than any other artistic or entertainment medium. But what one does with and in response to a film, within the cinematherapy modality, in the moment or with aesthetic distance, is part of what differentiates the process from a rip-roaring, coffee house, intellectual debate.
Like many men, Peter hates to talk about his failings, his fears, and his depression over an uncertain financial future. Initially skeptical about the technique, his mental table was turned as the demonstration zeroed in on the emotions engendered by the affecting dialogue on an East Berlin carousel.
Peter says he was glad he did the demonstration; for the show, and for himself. From his looks and his words, it is clear to me that Peter has come to see movies as being a lot more than entertainment. I sense he now fully recognizes that if people choose to pay attention to their autobiographic resonances when watching films, there may be much emotional gold to mine. What's on the screen is only half of the treasure map, though. The other half is located squarely in the mind's eye, in the eye of the beholder.
