Sydney, Australia/New York City – The Portal, a new experiential film that demonstrates the effectiveness of mindful meditation by delving into six powerful personal stories of how the practice brought each of them out of crisis, announced their app launch at their New York City premiere last Friday November 15 at the Village East Cinema (the film’s run there is through November 21). The app is now available globally through the Apple App Store.
The app is designed to facilitate the audience’s ongoing journey into meditation and includes guided meditations, yoga sequences, podcasts, inspirational insights, and behind-the-scenes footage.
Filmed in the USA, Canada, Australia and a Syrian refugee camp in Jordan, THE PORTAL is richly visual and sonically powerful. Mesmerizing cinematography and the raw intimate stories draw the audience in, while the immersive soundscape breaks ground in film history with its use of binaural beats in what is already an evocative score. These landscapes and textures become the sound and visual-scape for the app environment too.
“I believe real-time change is possible, and that through the poignant personal stories and ideas unfolding and weaving together in an immersive way we’ve got a portal to our greatest potential,” said the film’s director, Jacqui Fifer. “This project has been a catalyst for many of us involved and I’m seeing it jump-start a lot of other people too. In hindsight, I’ve spent my life preparing for it and watching many facets of myself emerge and harmonize in order to weave it together–the filmmaker, the musician, the dreamer, the feminine and so on–has been a fun process. I’d say it’s indicative of the times we’re living in, it’s the age of transformation, so to have tools that inspire us and help us move beyond the scars of our past and really come alive to what it is we are here to do is essential right now.”
The film focuses on six deeply moving stories from a diversity of viewpoints – from military veterans to scientists, humanitarians, high-performers and more, There is Ron ‘Booda’ Taylor—a retired US serviceman managing PTSD, Human Rights Expert Amandine Roche whose commitment to global peace took her on a quest for inner peace, Vietnamese refugee Due Quach who overcame developmental trauma through ‘mind hacking’, elite athlete Heather Hennessy who reinvented herself following a career-ending injury, Rabbi Ronnie Cahana who found freedom in the confines of a personal catastrophe, and neurosurgeon James R Doty MD who had to lose everything to find the meaning of life.
Supported by insights from three of the world’s foremost futurists—and a robot—the stories unfold as a beautiful, audiovisual spectacle that takes the viewer on their own mindfulness journey through the pain, joy and memory fragments of life. As THE PORTAL juxtaposes chaos with calm to provoke an emotional and psychological shift in the audience, experts Mikey Siegel, Dr. Julia Mossbridge, and Daniel Schmachtenberger unpack concepts that are emerging from the zeitgeist, inviting us to consider the bigger questions facing our society. How can we approach life in a new way? Is technology a tool for transformation? What does it mean to be human?
ENTER THE PORTAL
Making excellent use of these powerful mediums–film, book… and now app–THE PORTAL opens hearts and minds to an exciting vision for humanity transformed. Said producer and noted meditation leader Tom Cronin, “This is not sci-fi—this is real life. Humankind is staring into an abyss, yet within us all, we have the capability to bring ourselves (and our species) back from the brink. We’re part of a growing movement of game-changers to create a reimagined global future—I think people are ready for something different and technology can play a big role in uplifting us into a brighter future. This is why we created the app to help center people and guide them back to their inner space.”
In the spirit of the cinematic experience, the ENTER THE PORTAL App weaves a captivating and vibrant tapestry of technology, love, human potential, brain-hacking, stillness, and inner peace. Unique to the App experience is the addition of Movement to enhance what is an experiential and genre-defining approach to personal change and to accompany users on the next phase of their human evolution.
“It’s clear we just can’t play by the same old rules anymore when there’s an urgent need for meaning, connection, and harmony staring us in the face,” said Fifer, “We wanted to create a gateway to experience those missing pieces.”
ABOUT TOM CRONIN
Tom Cronin a former finance expert with a longstanding successful track record in business, as well as meditation, is the founder of The Stillness Project, a global movement to inspire one billion people to sit in stillness, daily. He is passionate about reducing stress and chaos in people’s lives. Tom’s ongoing work in transformational leadership and cultivating inner peace through meditation takes him around the world presenting keynote talks in such countries as Malaysia, Indonesia, Australia, Mexico, and the USA; hosting retreats; mentoring clients across the globe; teaching in schools; writing books; hosting mindfulness courses in the corporate sector; and creating THE PORTAL film-book experience, all as part of his commitment to the current planetary shift.
ABOUT JACQUI FIFER
Jacqui Fifer has had a dynamic career in the film industry line producing such films as BETTER WATCH OUT (2016), The OSIRIS CHILD (2016) and INFINI (2015) as well as producing the multi-award-winning dramatic feature CONCEALED (2017). She also co-directed the 2012 and 2013 “Dones en Art” (Women and Film) festivals in Spain. An advocate of human capacity development, Jacqui is thrilled to turn her hand towards a subject that is close to her heart with THE PORTAL experience.
ABOUT SUPERHUMAN INTERNATIONAL (SHI)
SHI is pushing the boundaries with this unique and transformational hybrid feature film experience, The Portal. SHI is an Australian company registered in the state of New South Wales. Tom Cronin is the company director. The project qualifies with the Australian Documentary Foundation for tax concessions.
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