"Struck By Lightning", 2002

Item — cassette: 5

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

This docuemtary explores the physical and cultural effects of lightning strikes and electrocution:

Lightning contributes annually to more death and injury that any other weather related phenomenon. Interestingly, 70% of victims survive the strike. Gretel Ehrlich explored the metaphors of electricity after surviving a lightning strike in her book A Match to the Heart. In language that surpasses the mere experience of being struck, she takes us into the strange world of weather and electrical phenomenon, dreams, exploration of the body under siege, cross cultural views of lightning and the philosophy of Tibetan Buddhism.

Gretel's story provides the "heart and soul" of this film. However, the film also explores how the dynamics of lightning and the conservation of electrical energy mediate her experience and the roll it plays, for good and ill, in all of our lives. For example, lightning caused the chemicals and compounds of the primordial soup to synthesize into amino acids, the basic building blocks of all organic life, and begin life on earth. It brings nitrogen rich rain, and causes fire which naturally "manages" the forests of the earth. Electricity is the force that runs our bodies and can be as beneficent as the electrical charge between God and Adam's fingers on the Sistine Chapel ceiling or it can send the body into seizure and early death. Electricity, tamed, gives us light and, in the form of medical implements, can diagnose and, in some cases, cure disease. The film also looks at the Dr. Frankenstein aspect of electricity, a creature charged to life by electrical currents roaming freely across the landscape. Electricity is also used to control or change behavior (electroshock treatment, aversion therapy) or to end life in the form of electrocutions. 58:00.

Dates

2002

Conditions Governing Access

Materials must be used on-site; no use of original material, access copies will be made available for viewing. Five business days advanced notice required. Access to parts of this collection may be restricted under provisions of state or federal law, condition of the material, or by donor.