Nadav Harel's film The Electric Brain will be broadcast on Channel 8

The film, the winner of the investigative award at the 2010 Docaviv festival, will premiere on Channel 8 on Saturday, August 14.8.2010, 22 at 00:XNUMX p.m.

This coming Saturday night, 14/8, Nadav Harel's hot film "The Electric Mind" will be broadcast in a premiere screening on Channel 8.

The film "The Electric Brain" by creator Nadav Harel presents the touching personal story of four characters dealing with brain diseases, such as manic depression, dystonia and epilepsy.

"The characters in the film undergo treatments using innovative medical technologies that interfere with the electrical impulses of the brain and enable scientific and philosophical observation into the innermost parts of the human brain. What used to be seen as science fiction, is now a breakthrough medical solution for the millions of people suffering from brain disorders." says Harel.

The film The Electric Brain won the research award at the Docaviv festival 2010. It was also selected to be shown in Paris as part of the world's leading science film festival "Paris Science" and at the Science Museum in New York in the months of October and November.

The film, dedicated to Nadav Harel's late father, a neurologist by profession, follows the film's protagonists, two men, a 14-and-a-half-year-old girl and an 80-year-old woman hospitalized in a closed ward, who suffer from depression, dystonia, epilepsy and manic depression - all of whom are undergoing innovative treatments using electrical brain stimulation technologies .

The film examines innovative brain surgery treatments that make use of innovative technologies such as: Medtronic's Activa, an electrical stimulation system with electrodes implanted in the brain to treat dystonia and Parkinson's, which was implanted in Sammy Hershkowitz, one of the characters in the film, who suffers from dystonia, which is a cerebral motor disorder that causes him to limp. The film follows what is happening in the operating rooms, accompanies the patients and their feelings during and after the transplant and raises awareness of the problem of stigma for innovative treatments through interviews with expert doctors.

Until recently, the vision of changing consciousness with the help of machines was considered a fantasy belonging to the worlds of science fiction and cinema. Today, the vast knowledge and resources invested in brain research are advancing at a dizzying pace and are beginning to yield controversial results. This film documents the beginning of a medical revolution with far-reaching future cultural implications, yet meets a real need for the millions suffering from brain disorders today.

The electric brain reframes the mysteries of the brain as it is perceived today by the forefront of brain research and psychiatry, and through the personal stories, the film asks poignant questions about the human-machine relationship - ethics, technology, culture and the concept of the "I".
The photography team of the Electric Brain documented the healing process of the 4 characters who suffer from brain disorders and undergo a series of treatments with innovative electrical stimulation technologies for the brain. At the basis of the innovative treatments is the thought that if we can map the activity of the brain we can simulate this activity and influence the human brain in the same way as programming a computer. The camera accompanies the characters throughout the treatment, teaches about their illness, their looks and hopes before the treatment, patiently follows their daily dealings with the reality of the treatment and shows the change they go through as a result of the treatment.

About the vision and challenges behind making the film - the director's version

Nadav Harel, the director and initiator of the film states: "I came up with the idea of ​​making the film through my brother, Dr. Eran Harel, who is one of the psychiatrists involved in the research on electromagnetic resonance. This fact is one of the reasons for the extraordinary trust and agreement I received from the psychiatric institutions where the experiment is taking place. I see this as a rare opportunity to take a look inside a laboratory engaged in research on people suffering from mental brain disorders."

When I started researching the film, I came across the phenomenon of a disdainful and unsympathetic attitude of the general public towards the psychiatric institution and the "mentally ill", one of the reasons is the demonization of the electric market treatment which to my surprise I learned is one of the effective treatments for depression in people for whom no medication helps. I think the film bridges the general public with psychiatry, neurology and brain research. The innovative treatments are news in themselves, news that can create a new situation between those suffering from brain disorders, and the establishment that is able to give them the help they need."

"I see the film "The Electric Brain" as an interesting combination of a very personal subject, characters suffering from mental illness and movement disorders, a situation that requires sensitive, modest and non-aggressive documentary-making with a very impersonal subject - promising innovative technology, based on intellectual knowledge, scientists, laboratories and hardware. The combination between technology and state of mind is a topic that personally interests me and I see this film as an indirect continuation of the "Attack of the Happy" films about the sociology of the ecstasy drug, a film that was also produced for Channel 8."

"The challenges I faced in making the film were first of all finding people who would agree to be photographed. It wasn't easy and we spent a lot of searching until we found the brave people who agreed to be photographed mainly because they thought it was an unspoken topic that was important to expose. That's why the film took 4 years until its final editing.
Another problem was how to give visual expression to mental brain processes? The film introduces the viewer to biological and mental processes on all kinds of levels, from scientific simulations collected in brain research laboratories all over the world, to characters undergoing brain surgeries that reveal the brain itself while fully awake. I also had a dilemma about how to present the subject and overcome the prejudices that exist when it comes to electrical intervention in the human brain, one of the greatest successes of the film in my opinion is its ability to bridge the chasm between the "soul" and the body, a very sensitive subject especially for anyone who believes that there is a soul or any An entity of our "I" beyond the tissues of our body and brain. And I had the challenge of how to tell a story that is a knowledge-rich research thesis with personal stories of patients, after months of serious brainstorming in the editing room, it seems to me that we managed to find the balance between expert professors who explain very complicated things and the subjective experience of a patient undergoing treatment that changes the reality of his life ".