Interview: The Portal Filmmakers
In The Portal filmmakers Tom Cronin and Jacqui Fifer show the power of meditation for transforming people’s lives by weaving together the stories of six people from different walks of life and different parts of the world. Through the course of the film, we see how their lives have been transformed by the practice of meditation, and we see through the lens of these diverse figures how inner change can bring about a larger planetary shift. We also meet an evolutionary philosopher, a robotics engineer, a rabbi, and a cognitive neuroscientist who is trying to teach robots unconditional love.
Can raising awareness save humanity? What is the role of technology in this? These are important questions and it’s refreshing to see a film exploring them.
Beautifully shot at locations around the world, The Portal takes you on a journey through the heart and soul. It’s more than a film; it’s an experience that will leave you transformed.
This is a timely and important movie that suggests that meditation and raising our collective consciousness is the key to solving all the challenges that humanity faces, from fragmented attention to climate change. It’s a proposition that’s hard to argue with.
The Portal is in select theaters now. You can find out more at the official website. The filmmakers have also written a companion book for those who are interested in going deeper.
We recently had the chance to talk to Tom and Jacqui about what inspired the film, and about their personal experiences with the subject matter. Here is that interview.
What are your personal relationships to the subject matter of the film (meditation, etc)?
Director Jacqui Fifer: I’m very much into high-performance and brain-hacking and I've been drawn to meditation for years as a tool to tune and optimise my mind and body. Mostly in the sense of being able to get the best out of myself, particularly creatively, and aiming towards infusing my life with a global personal harmony. It's a work in progress, of course, like anything, there's always growth. I've also healed chronic illness using intuitive mindfulness, so I know on a physical level how powerful it can be in retraining my physical responses to patterns in life and mind.
When I think about broader themes that we deal with in the film, like the transformative power of love, or the role crisis plays in our evolution, or technology as a transformational tool, and what it takes for humans to connect deeply (to themselves and others), they are definitely themes that have been in the background for me for a long time. Moving people through film and music has been the basis of my work for a long time but the more I reflect on my path to this point, and how meaningful the ideas the film contains are to me now, the more I realise that it's part of my life's work. As Mikey Siegel says, "We create what we are", so it makes sense that the focus of my work leans towards these things because I think a lot about evolution and the personal and collective qualities we embody when we're operating as our best self. Although it's funny because with the unconditional love sub-plot, it emerged out of the process and the interviews. We didn't initiate that search. But I do remember the instantaneously strong connection to both Dr Julia Mossbridge (personally and her work) and Ronnie's story. I could never imagine the film without them. It makes sense: learning what love is and what it represents has been an important step for me too, in my adult years.
Producer Tom Cronin: After suffering many years of extreme anxiety,depression, insomnia, and panic attacks I eventually found meditation as a tool to help me move through that chaos and suffering, and it had a phenomenal effect. Very quickly I started to experience a calm and lightness and it became an essential part of my day. Of course, it wasn't the end of challenges and struggles in life. But, by using meditation, just like those in the film, it gave me a greater capacity to navigate the complexity of living in the world.
What originally inspired the book and the film? Which came first?
TC: When creating The Stillness Project I had a vision to use multiple mediums to inspire people to meditate and one of those mediums was film. This was not long after the success of The Secretand I realised that film was a powerful platform to inspire people to change. Together Jacqui and I created The Portaland on the back of that we created the book for a deeper exploration into the wisdom and the stories through the book.
The film presents adiverse array of people and stories. How did you originally connect to those individuals?
JF: We took inspiration from many places and it was a meticulous process requiring lots of patience. We were exploring the role that crisis plays in our personal evolution, and what a transformational pathway through could look like. Offset against the current global crisis as an evolutionary juncture. So an intersection between the current global crises, and each other, was important so as to give a sense of uniqueness but also cohesion for our storytelling. Tom and I had an incredible team of researchers helping to brainstorm and seek out unique and powerful tales of transformation, and the right individuals to help paint the global narrative. The search centred around the refugee experience, suffering at the hands of war and conflict (as individuals caught up in a system), the effect of tech and AI on our collective psyche, stillness in all its forms, and financial uncertainty. So the search went on to find people who were ready and willing to tell their part of what is a global story. They came through personal connections and recommendations, organisations, podcasts, research papers, studies with veterans suffering PTSD and using meditation as a tool. So many ways. We spoke to over 300 people during the process.
What effect are you hoping this movie has on people who see it?
JF: I’m hoping that it makes people feel good and energised about themselves and life, no matter where they're at. And to see their own journey, with all it's unique permutations, as an asset. I'm already seeing it disrupt people on a soul level, helping to unlock that next step, or dreams that have been yearning to emerge. If we can all start to recognise what it is we're here to do, or ramp up what we're doing to the next level (knowing that we all have a unique role here, right now) and feel bold enough to really step into it, then I think that we have a great chance as a collective. It's the calling of our times. And we have the tools to support the transition!
TC: The vision and intention behind the film and book is to give people a sense of hope and inspiration, a sense of possibility that each and every one of us, regardless of our background, challenges, and life stories, all have ability to go through our own chrysalis moment and transform. The film and book are the inspiration to move into action, and ideally that action is the stillness and silence of meditation.
Have you had success with a specific meditation technique, and are you recommending a certain meditation technique?
JF: I use a bit of a medley of practices (mindfulness, transcending meditation, contemplation practices, awareness practices, yoga, binaural beats for brain entrainment,etc.) and I find them all super useful. Becoming aware of my thoughts and putting them aside is a great step to shift out of drama and story cycles. The combo of meditation and contemplation helps create a greater ability to problem solve and see both the details and the big picture of what's going on, and move flexibly between the two. Good for creativity and productivity, which I like. But we are not recommending anything in particular. The intention is more about piquing curiosity, if these are unfamiliar ideas, in a way that's gentle and experiential. We wanted to give people a taste of it in the cinema.
TC: I personally have had a great deal of success with the deeper style transcending meditation techniques using mantras. However, we aren’t promoting any specific meditation technique through the film. Each of the people in the film use diverse meditation styles and we are suggesting that meditation can help us move through the challenges of life regardless of a specific technique.
The film weaves together a number of important themes, including the role of mindfulness, human relationship, unconditional love, and technology. Were you intending to show these connections from the beginning or did they arise in the process of making the film?
TC: Initially the intention of the film was to show the power of meditation and changing people's lives however as time went on and we realised there were deeper themes to also be embraced we decided to diversify and add things like human relationships and technology into the equation.
JF: Maybe not from the beginning when Tom reflects on the very beginning of painting a vision in his mind and planting that initial seed. But yes, years later sitting down to contemplate, how do we tell a compelling story, based around personal story, that's relevant and essential to our times–really reading the zeitgeist and the deep need that's everywhere you look–those are all pieces that can't be ignored. This was a process of telling the story of personal transformation, and what an asset meditation and mindfulness practices can play in that process, but in a way that is globally relevant now. Tech was connected to AI, on a destructive level as a global threat but also personally as a huge contributor to people's daily stress levels and capacity for centredness. And a lot of what we're dealing with here is stress and how we cope. So we were always searching for the tech/AI story. I knew that the tie-in would be powerful and would lead this to be bigger and deeper for people. But as I said before, we didn't quite know it would come in the form of unconditional love! Although it is absolutely perfect, and it was Mikey Siegel who suggested Dr Julia Mossbridge to us. So glad he did. And remember too that the intention was to give an experience of meditation. I asked myself questions about what that means. How do we create calm? How do we experience interconnectedness? It's natural that human relationships and how we live together on this planet is important, now more than ever. So a lot of it was part of the intention but it certainly became richer and more deeply interconnected thematically over time as the pieces revealed themselves.
Are there any resources (besides the book) that you would recommend to people who are curious about the mindfulness practices that the film highlights so well?
TC: We are currently developing our online programs and an app that will support people through that transformational process. In the meantime we have our 21 day meditation program called Faster Deeper Bliss where people can learn to dive deep into meditation.
Would you care to share some of the films that inspired or paved the way for this film? (e.g., Awake, What the Bleep, etc.)
TC: We often referred to films like Baraka that had a meditative component to the observation of human life. We were also in someway inspired by the wave of films that were coming out in the transformational space but we did want to break new ground and not be too influenced by something from the past.
The Portal is in select theaters now. You can find out more at the official website. The filmmakers have also written a companion book for those who are interested in going deeper.
Catch The Portal in the Bay Area:
Berkeley’s Rialto Elmwood, November 3
Sebastopol’s Rialto, November 4
San Rafael’s Smith Rafael’s Film Center, November 4
San Francisco’s Roxie, November 5
