"Our situation on earth seems strange... Everyone of us appears here involuntarily and are invited for a short stay without knowing why. To me it is enough to wonder at the secrets." -- Albert Einstein

"One must cultivate one's own garden" -- Voltaire

Believing she had telepathic powers, Mary Craig and her husband, the writer Upton Sinclair, set out to test these powers in the 1920s. Sinclair would draw pictures and then transmit them mentally to Craig; she would draw the image she received in an adjacent, closed room. Their experiments were 75% successful. The telepathic interaction between Craig and Sinclair served as one of the starting points for my film Mental Radio which depicts psychic and telepathic interactions between soul mates both animal and human. This film is also visual interpretation of my thyroid illness Graves Disease, diagnosed late in 1990. The physicals in the film replicate the weekly examinations I received for a 6-month period. The film's editing was dynamically composed but not necessarily meant to fit the sounds and music. The pacing between staccato vs. still shots is meant to parallel or simulate the physiological sensations associated with Graves Disease which include heart palpitations and unstable feelings counterpoised with periods of tranquility. Mental Radio is also documentation of my garden following a chronological development -- from early Spring to mid-summer with the garden in full bloom. The film juxtaposes the vitality and fragility of the human body with that of the earth/nature. -- AGN

Produced, Directed, Photographed, and Edited by Albert Gabriel Nigrin

With Irene Fizer, Daniel Nigrin, Gabriel Nigrin, Victory Furniture, Whitee, Tiny, Samson Dean, Baldy, and Marco "The Master" Polo

Music by Daniel Nigrin

Film-to-Video Transfer by Brodsky & Treadway

Funding and services provided in part by the New Jersey Media Arts Center, Rutgers University, and DAK Productions.

Special thanks to Upton Sinclair, Mary Craig, Lili Dolly Nigrin, John Belton, NJMAC, and Irene Fizer.

Production format: Super 8 film; post-produced on 1" Video