Film, Lecture & Ceremony
Watch Damanhur
Watch Damanhur
Come to Life
Journey through the underground temples, sacred forests, and daily life of the community through film. From full-length documentaries to Falco Tarassaco's lecture archive, from Music of Plants concerts to ceremony recordings — this is Damanhur in motion.
Essential Viewing
Featured Documentaries
Three documentary works that have introduced Damanhur to audiences worldwide — from broadcast television to international film festivals. Each offers a distinct window into the community's extraordinary life. Note: production embed IDs below are illustrative — visit the Damanhur YouTube channel for the full verified playlist with current upload IDs.
Feature Film · approx. 52 min
Damanhur: The Underground Temples
The most widely screened documentary about the Temples of Humankind — originally broadcast on Italian national television and subsequently released internationally. The film follows a camera crew granted rare full access to the underground complex, conducting interviews with community members about the construction process, the discovery crisis of 1992, and the spiritual principles that shaped every inch of the nine halls. Includes close-up footage of the mosaic panels, stained glass ceilings, marble floors, and trompe-l'oeil architecture that make the Temples one of the most astonishing artistic achievements of the twentieth century. A must-watch for anyone planning a visit or seeking to understand what the Temples represent within Damanhur's cosmological vision.
Archival Lecture · approx. 78 min
Falco Tarassaco: On Consciousness and the Future of Humanity
One of Falco Tarassaco's most celebrated public lectures — delivered at a European spirituality conference in 2009 and subsequently released by the community as a standalone archival film. In this extended talk, Falco ranges across the full breadth of his philosophical vision: the nature of human consciousness as a multi-dimensional phenomenon; the relationship between individual and collective evolution; the role of intentional community as a laboratory for the future; the science of Selfica as a bridge between the material and energetic dimensions of reality; and his vision of what humanity might become if it chose, collectively, to take the inner world as seriously as the outer. The lecture is characterised by Falco's distinctive combination of rigorous argument and sudden lyrical flight — a style that made him one of the most compelling speakers in European spiritual culture. Subtitled in English, German, and French.
Feature Documentary · approx. 44 min
Damanhur: A New Civilization in the Italian Alps
This award-winning documentary — winner of the Best Alternative Communities Film award at the European Ecovillage Film Festival 2018 — takes a wider view than previous films about Damanhur, situating the community within the global movement toward intentional, sustainable, spiritually engaged living. Interviews with long-term citizens, academics who have studied the community, GEN network colleagues, and first-time visitors are interwoven with stunning footage of the Temples, Sacred Woods, Music of Plants laboratory, and community celebrations across the four seasons. The film was shot over three years and gives particular attention to what Damanhur can offer as a model to communities and individuals grappling with the crises of the contemporary world — ecological, political, psychological, and spiritual. One of the most balanced and beautifully crafted films about the community to date.
Virtual Access
Temple Video Tours
For those who cannot travel to northern Italy, the community has produced detailed video walkthroughs of four of the nine underground halls — giving a sense of the scale, detail, and atmosphere of these extraordinary spaces. Full virtual access complements but never replaces the embodied experience of being present in the Temples.
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12:34
Hall of Mirrors — Virtual Walkthrough
The deepest and most philosophically complex of the nine halls — a chamber of mirrored alcoves reflecting the concept of consciousness perceiving itself.
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18:22
Hall of Metals — Sacred Mosaic Tour
Close examination of the extraordinary mosaic programmes designed by Falco Tarassaco — portraying cosmic forces, planetary energies, and the Damanhurian vision of human evolution.
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09:47
The Blue Temple — Meditation Space
The most intimate of the Temples' spaces — a circular meditation chamber whose blue vault and Selfic columns create one of the most extraordinary atmospheres anywhere in the underground complex.
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15:08
Androgyne Hall — The Union Chamber
The hall devoted to the principle of the sacred union of opposites — its central glass sculpture and surrounding mosaic programmes among the most conceptually ambitious works in the entire complex.
The Lecture Archive
Falco Tarassaco Lecture Series
Falco Tarassaco delivered hundreds of lectures across his lifetime — to the Damanhur community, to international conference audiences, and to the public. The community has carefully archived and digitised its collection of recordings, and is steadily releasing them with subtitles in multiple languages. Six key lectures from the archive are presented here.
I
The Nature of Time and Consciousness
One of Falco's most celebrated early lectures — delivered to the full Damanhur community in 1998 and considered a foundational text in the school of meditation curriculum. Addresses the structure of time as understood from the perspective of synchronic theory: why time is not linear, how consciousness can navigate between temporal frames, what the synchronic windows are and how to use them, and the relationship between individual time and cosmic time. Dense with philosophical argument but always grounded in practical experience. The lecture that most directly influenced Damanhur's calendar system and the structure of its major ceremonies.
II
Selfica: A Science of the Future
A landmark public lecture delivered at the first international Selfica conference hosted by Damanhur in 2003. Falco traces the history of Selfic knowledge from ancient Egypt through the European esoteric tradition to Damanhur's contemporary research, introduces the theoretical framework of the Selfic field, demonstrates key properties of representative Selfic objects, and presents the community's research findings in bioelectrical measurement of Selfic effects. Followed by an extended Q&A with conference delegates including academics, practitioners, and journalists.
III
The Multiple Souls — Theory and Practice
Falco's most comprehensive public presentation of Damanhur's theory of the multiple souls — one of the most distinctive and philosophically challenging aspects of Damanhurian anthropology. The lecture introduces the claim that the human being is not a single soul but a community of between five and eight soul-presences, explains the experiential basis for this claim, explores what it means practically for psychology, relationships, and spiritual development, and responds to philosophical objections from the audience with characteristic precision and warmth. Essential viewing for anyone seeking to understand what distinguishes Damanhurian spirituality from other contemporary spiritual traditions.
IV
The Game of Life — Community as Spiritual Practice
An intimate lecture delivered to a small group of prospective community members, in which Falco explains the Game of Life — Damanhur's system of structured personal growth goals held accountable by the community — in unusually direct and personal terms. He discusses the psychological challenges of the Game, its relationship to the community's constitutional values, its connection to the spiritual tradition of Damanhur, and why he considers it one of the community's most important innovations. Includes extraordinary footage of a Game of Life review ceremony.
V
Sacred Architecture — The Language of Form
A rare lecture in which Falco discusses his role as the primary architect and artistic director of the Temples of Humankind — a role he rarely foregrounded in public. He explains the geometric principles underlying each hall's design, the symbolic programmes of the major mosaic works, the relationship between architectural form and consciousness, and what he hoped the Temples would mean to those who entered them — both as visitors and as the community members who built them by night over fourteen years. Accompanied by projected drawings and photographs from the construction period.
VI
What Is a Human Being? — The Final Lectures
Among the last major lectures Falco delivered before his death in June 2013, this extended two-part session brings together the full arc of his thinking on the nature of the human being: its multiple-soul structure, its relationship to the cosmos, its capacity for consciousness evolution, its place within the non-human intelligences that populate reality, and the specific role that Damanhur's fifty-year experiment represents in the larger story of human development. Deeply personal in places, cosmically ambitious throughout — a profound summation of a lifetime of thinking, living, and building.
Living Music
Music of Plants — Video Archive
Since the first public Music of Plants concert in 1995, Damanhur has produced dozens of live recordings and laboratory demonstrations capturing the extraordinary phenomenon of plants performing live music. Three featured recordings from the archive are presented here — along with links to the full concert playlist on the Damanhur YouTube channel.
Ficus Benjamina · Sacred Woods Concert
The Forest Speaks — Open Air Concert in the Sacred Woods
One of the most beautiful Music of Plants recordings in the archive — a summer solstice concert performed among the ancient trees of the Sacred Woods, with a Ficus Benjamina playing alongside a human violin and cello duo. The recording captures the extraordinary quality of a plant musician developing responsiveness over the course of a 40-minute performance — beginning with isolated tones and evolving toward increasingly complex melodic phrases that interact directly with the human musicians. Shot in the golden light of a Piedmont summer evening, this recording is widely considered among the finest documents of the Music of Plants tradition.
Dragon Tree · Laboratory Demonstration
Lab Sessions: Dragon Tree First Contact
A rare window into the Music of Plants laboratory — footage shot during a research session in which a Dragon Tree (Dracaena draco) is introduced to the bioelectrical interface for the first time. Researchers from the plant consciousness lab narrate in real time what they observe: initial silence, then tentative single tones, then a period of apparent exploration as the plant discovers the range of the interface, followed by a 12-minute sequence of extraordinary complexity that the research team has never been able to fully account for within existing theoretical frameworks. A document of citizen science at its most honest and its most astonishing.
Multiple Species · Festival Concert
Botanical Orchestra — Full Ensemble Performance
Damanhur's most ambitious Music of Plants performance to date — a 90-minute concert featuring seven plant musicians of different species simultaneously interfaced and performing alongside a six-piece human ensemble including piano, viola, flute, percussion, and two vocalists. Performed at the international ecovillage festival at Damanhur in August 2022 before an audience of 400. The recording documents the full arc of the performance — from the hesitant opening, through a remarkable mid-concert passage in which all seven plants appeared to synchronise their tonalities, to the jubilant finale. Subtitled in English with brief scientific commentary from the research team.
Daily Life
Community Life on Film
Damanhur's community media team documents the full texture of life in the nuclei — seasonal festivals, ceremony recordings, a day-in-the-life series, and behind-the-scenes glimpses of the workshops, gardens, schools, and studios that make up daily existence in the federation.
Winter Solstice Ceremony in the Temples
Ceremony · 34 min
A Day in the Life: Nuclei Damjl
Documentary · 22 min
Sacred Woods: The Walking Ritual at Equinox
Ceremony · 18 min
Inside the Selfica Workshop
Behind the Scenes · 27 min
Subscribe to the Damanhur Channel
New uploads every week — lectures, concert recordings, ceremony footage, community life, and guided tours of the Temples. The full archive spans 200+ videos across 30 years of community film-making.
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