In 1973, my mom, Mary Gidley, was picked as the navigator on a raft that drifted across the Atlantic Ocean with no power and 11 people on board! The idea was for a controversial Mexican anthropologist, Santiago Genovés, to see and document the conflict that six men and seven women would face over 3-month drift across the Atlantic Ocean.
I thought my racing career and lifestyle of speed was adventurous, but compared to what my mom did when she was 25 years old … it’s nothing! I’m looking forward to seeing it when it opens locally and plan to have a gathering of family and friends to see it together!
The film opens tomorrow in New York and hits the Bay Area on June 21st at the Alamo Drafthouse in San Francisco and June 28th at the Smith Rafael Film Center in San Rafael.
My mom is also scheduled to speak at both the openings in San Francisco and San Rafael, CA.
presents
THE RAFT
An Unforgettable Portrait of the Infamous Social Experiment Known as “The Sex Raft”
Opens June 7 in NY with nationwide expansion to follow
**Winner Grand Jury Award – 2018 CPH:DOX**
**Winner Silver Hugo Award – 2018 CHICAGO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL**
**Official Selection – 2018 BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL**
**Official Selection -2019 FULL FRAME DOCUMENTARY FILM FESTIVAL**
“A fantastic voyage… thoughtful and fascinating.”
– Screen Daily
“Exquisitely constructed.”
– Frieze
“Lively, argument rich… navigated with wit, sensitivity and rueful social awareness.”
– Variety
In the summer of 1973, an international crew of six women and five men, chosen for their youth, diversity, and sex appeal, embarked together on a most unusual sea voyage-a close-quarters, privacy-free trip across the Atlantic on a raft christened the Acali, initiated by the controversial Mexican anthropologist Santiago Genovés (1923-2013), who proposed to use the group as guinea pigs in his investigation of the origins (and erotic’s) of violent conflict.
Controversial from the get-go, lambasted by the media as a ‘Sex Raft’, the Acali mission stayed afloat for 101 days. Now, more than forty years later, surviving Acali crew members reunite to recollect their experience for filmmaker Marcus Lindeen (Regretters, Glorious Accidents), who has devised an ingenious method for taking them-and us-back into their past. Extensive archival 16mm footage shot on-board the Acali shows us the subjects of The Raft as they were, while studio-bound reenactments on an exact replica of the vessel help to weave together future and past in a unique and fascinating fashion.
What Lindeen and the Acali veterans recover together is a story of idealism gone awry, with the egomaniacal Genovés, resurrected here through readings from his research and diaries. The Acali crew members also dredge up their own memories of youthful journeys of self-doubt and self-determination, and of the unforgettable bonds that they formed both because of and in spite of Genovés’s power-mad macho muddling, which eventually threatens to put his test subjects in very real physical danger.
Coming across the distance of years like a drama unfolding in real-time, The Raft is a moral thriller and much more besides: a document of the thin line between science and cultism in the early ’70s, a touching story of camaraderie and sisterhood in particular, and, in the person of Genovés, an unforgettable portrait of oblivious, toxic masculinity. It is the story of a voyage started long ago-and one that in some sense is still underway.
The Raft is narrated by Daniel Giménez Cacho (lead actor in Lucrecia Martel’s Zama), featuring production design by frequent Lars von Trier collaborator Simone Grau Roney. An exhibition of the film’s recreated set was featured at the Centre Pompidou in Paris.
DIRECTOR: Marcus Lindeen
PRODUCERS: Erik Gandini, Julie Goldman, Christopher Clements, Jesper Kurlandsky, and Ingmar Trost
RUNTIME: 97 Minutes
RELEASE DATE: June 7th 2019
BOOKING CONTACT:
George Schmalz, george@metrograph.com
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