Dazed takes the gay test
“I’ll never forget the day she agreed to be a part of the project,” says Lindeen. ” After numerous discussions, and showing Björnstam his first documentary, The Regretters – “a conversation between two older men who both regretted going through sexual reassignment surgery to become women” – however, he finally managed to convince the female pioneer of his integrity as a storyteller. Also, as a woman in the captain profession, she felt humiliated by the way she had been treated by Santiago. She felt ashamed about how the journey was portrayed in the press – as ‘The Sex Raft’. “Maria was one of the first people I spoke to, but she was very hesitant to be a part of the film. It took me and a team of researchers almost two years.” One of the biggest early breakthroughs, the filmmaker recalls, was discovering captain Maria Björnstam. “So tracking them down from around the world, 43 years later, without their real names, was like detective work. “It was really complicated because in his book about the experiment, Santiago had given the participants pseudonyms,” Lindeen explains. Pulling off the documentary, however, was no mean feat. When I started to read about it, I was amazed by how truly experimental and adventurous the story was, but rather than being ideological or political like so many other 70s concepts, it was more about science and human behaviour wanting to know the truth about how we function as people.” It was headlined ‘The Sex Raft’, and of course I was curious to know more. “By coincidence, not long after, I read this book about the 100 strangest scientific experiments of all time, and the Acali was one of them. I wanted to bring them together on the same stage they’d performed on and to hear their perspective years on.” This was logistically impossible, as it turned out – but the concept of reuniting a group of 70s radicals had embedded itself in Lindeen’s mind. “I was setting out to reunite a group of older Swedish actors in Stockholm who had all been part of a radical theatre production in the 70s. “It started as a failed theatre project actually,” Lindeen tells us of the film’s origins. Fortunately for the curious among us, new documentary, The Raft, by Swedish filmmaker Marcus Lindeen, offers extraordinary insight into the 101-day voyage, revisiting the original footage (captured by Etsuke on 16mm film), and reuniting the seven surviving participants for the first time in over four decades. “Would you kill someone? What would make you kill someone?” Crew selected, the scientist and his laboratory mice met in the Canary Islands, and, on May 11, 1973, they set sail for Mexico on a journey more testing than even Genovés could imagine.
![dazed takes the gay test dazed takes the gay test](https://mpd-biblio-covers.imgix.net/9780805043877.jpg)
“What would you do if threatened?” Genovés wanted to know. Prior to setting off, all participants were subjected to extensive physical and psychological testing, involving multiple questionnaires.
![dazed takes the gay test dazed takes the gay test](https://denver.cbslocal.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/15909806/2022/01/RAPID-TEST-COVID-MG-RAW-01-concatenated-131249_frame_5183.jpeg)
Later the Acali would be dubbed “The Sex Raft” by the media, who followed the raft’s progress with salacious delight. The scientist was also intrigued by the purported connection between violence and sexual attraction, and thus deliberately chose “sexually attractive” participants from the thousands who responded to his international newspaper ads.
![dazed takes the gay test dazed takes the gay test](https://media.newyorker.com/photos/601b5bbe6fe3d515c89fe0c7/master/pass/210215_r37917.jpg)
The Swedish captain, Maria Björnstam, was the first woman in the world to secure a maritime command certificate, while Israeli doctor, Edna, and French scuba diver, Servane, occupied the other key positions of life onboard. Keen to harness – and put to the test – the force of the burgeoning feminist movement, he opted to place women in the raft’s most important roles. Ensuring a diverse crew – among them Bernardo, an Angolan Catholic priest Etsuke, a Japanese photographer and Jose-Maria, a Uruguayan anthropologist – was only one part of Genovés’ master plan.