The Raft
Essential Documentaries
•
1h 38m
Directed by Marcus Lindeen | 97 mins | 2018
In the summer of 1973, a young international crew of six women and five men embarked together on a most unusual sea voyage—a close-quarters trip across the Atlantic from Spain to Mexico on a free-floating raft christened the Acali, initiated by Mexican anthropologist Santiago Genovés, who proposed to use the group as guinea pigs in his investigation of the origins of violent conflict and dynamics of sexual attraction. Contentious from the get-go, incorrectly labeled by the media as ‘The Sex Raft,” the Acali mission stayed afloat for 101 days—and now, more than forty years later, the surviving crew members reunite to reenact and recollect their experience, additionally illustrated with extensive 16mm archival footage from the voyage. What results is a document of the thin line between science and cultism in the early ’70s, a touching story of female camaraderie and, in the character of Genovés, an unforgettable portrait of oblivious, toxic masculinity.
A Metrograph Pictures release.
Up Next in Essential Documentaries
-
The Windmill Movie
Directed by Alexander Olch | 82 mins | 2008
“What if someone else wrote your autobiography?” That is the question posited by Alexander Olch as he tells the life-story of his former Harvard professor, the filmmaker Richard P. Rogers. For twenty years, Rogers worked on an autobiographical portrait... -
The Metamorphosis of Birds
Directed by Catarina Vasconcelos | 101 mins | 2020
A metaphor-rich magic realist metafiction memoir, Vasconcelos’s hybrid documentary debut feature tells the story of the filmmaker’s family history—in particular, her grandparents’ love affair and her commiseration with her father over the early ... -
Did You Wonder Who Fired The Gun?
Directed by Travis Wilkerson | 90 mins | 2017
A particularly lacerating take on the “home movie,” Wilkerson’s film excavates the buried story of his own great-grandfather’s murder of a Black man in c. 1946 Dothan, Alabama, an inquest that puts him in conflict with contemporary residents of the t...
