I discovered THE GREAT HISTORY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY when I was looking at the Festival Scope website and discovered the trailer. I was so taken by the film I reached out to the filmmakers and asked them to see it. I had and have no idea where this film is playing but I had to see it.
Director Aria Covamonas has crafted a tale about a a cosmic animator who is forced by the Central Committee to make a philosophical film under the gaze of Chairman Mao. The result is a film that bounces through the history of philosophy, Chinese history and with aLooney Tunes style madness. It's done via cut out and collage animation mshed up with public domain images and sound.
Think what would have happened if Monty Python had a political Terry Gilliam make animation shot through vat of concentrate hallucunogenic drugs and magic mushrooms, with a dialog track largely in Chinese, an absurd sense of reality and the sensibility of Salvador Dali while mimicing Eastern European animation during the Soviet years.
This may be the greatest midnight movie ever made... made some 50 years after the heyday of midnight movies. Watching this I was transported back to the mind melting years when I went to see the wild and wonton films that are now legends. Watching this was like being trapped in midnight cinema when wrong drugs kicked in.
WOW.
I am not going to lie, but I have no idea what is going on in this film but it bent and broken my brain in the best sort of way.
This film is cinematic ART (the capitalization is intentional) of the highest order.
To be certain this is not going to work foreveryone (squares need not apply) but for those who want something to open your mind without drugs (or even with drugs) THE GREAT HISTORY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY is required viewing.
This is one of the greatest films I've seen in 2025...and maybe ever. You need to see this- you may not like it, but I'm damn sure that even as you stagger out into the day light you will know you have seen something.
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