Tag Archives: switzerland

Relax, Open Your Eyes

Relax, Open Your Eyes dives deep into the world of cryonics with privileged access, as a young family in Western Canada throws themselves fully into building a facility to help them live forever – The Futurist Club.

We follow matriarch Carrie Radomski as she travels across the USA, then to Spain and Switzerland, to research and train with an international web of cryonicists who are trying to hack mortality. We step in the world’s top facilities where hundreds of people (and some pets) are cryogenically frozen, and contemplate the question of whether to freeze just your head or your entire body. We enter cutting edge research centres that are mapping the human brain to attempt an alternative to cryonics, through chemical preservation and mind uploading to the cloud. We travel with Carrie as she trains in medical response protocols and see her beliefs and dedication tested along her journey that spans 3 years.

Carrie’s grassroots mission to build a hometown cryonics centre is driven by her husband’s escalating health problems, a dedication to her ‘forever family’, and growing cryonics community. Carrie and cryonicists at large believe death is an engineering problem to be solved, but the path to solving it tests her closest relationship and threatens to rupture the cryonics community.

Victor’s Last Class

At the age of 52 and suffering from terrible chronic back pain, Victor D’Altorio decided to end his life.

Victor was a proud homosexual, a lover of life, honest, and outrageous. As an acting teacher of the Meisner technique for 20 years, he was committed to living in the moment, and accepting all that that had to offer, however painful it may be. But after fighting bone marrow cancer into remission he found himself with debilitating degenerative disc disorder in his neck and back, and he could not deny the pain that he was in or the dim prospects of relief. His personal commitment to truth and honesty made him despise the idea of suicide in the traditional sense. He simply could not cause that pain to the ones he loved. He decided to tell everyone (via his blog) that he was going to kill himself. This is the starting point for our story.

Over the next five months together we see Vic soaking in the tub in pain, making sex jokes, yelling at the cameraman, crying over his deceased partner, teaching eager new students, wavering on the big choice, and bonding with Brendan, the film maker. During this time, Brendan’s mission changes. He stops being simply the filmmaker asking why, and becomes a close friend trying to change Victor’s mind. Brendan puts together an acting class for Victor to teach to remind him of the life he once loved living, he teams with other students to produce the play that Victor had written, he does all he can to convince his new friend and mentor to stick around.