Man Isn't Dying of Thirst

Overview

This cautionary 1970 film produced by Studio Caf in Czechoslovakia, looks at the effects and possible benefits of LSD. The film showcases pioneering work performed by Miroslav Sajda, a chemist at the Military Research Institute in Hradec Krlov, east Bohemia. After news leaked that the U.S. Army was testing LSD on human subjects, Sajda helped prepare an LSD test on Czechoslovak soldiers to see how well they would perform while under the influence of the drug. He then went on to conduct studies with hundreds of civilians, and collaborated with filmmaker Vclav Hapl to make this film. "Dying of Thirst" ended up being banned by the authorities for almost twenty years. The film follows two people taking LSD, one a test subject and one undergoing psychotherapy. Both hallucinate in various ways with extensive animations attempting to show these hallucinations.