Announcer (00:00:04) - This is Dream Power Radio, the place where your dreams turn into reality. Here is your host, Debbie Spector. Weisman.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:00:13) - Hello, hello, hello and welcome to Dream Power Radio. I'm your host, Certified Dream-Life Coach Debbie Spector Weisman. This is the place where we talk about dreams, both daytime and nighttime dreams, and how you can use them to make the internal shift to a life you love and discover the truth of who you really are. As regular listeners to this podcast might know, before I became involved in dream work and then started this podcast, I was in the entertainment business in a company with my husband. About 25 years ago, the business took a turn from doing mostly movie advertising to supervising post-production. Now those are the various jobs that are done after the initial production work is completed. So these are mostly independent commercial fare. Nothing much to write home about. But it was interesting work and a nice creative way to make living. Then a few years later, the business took yet another turn.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:01:11) - We were hired to work on the groundbreaking film, What The Bleep Do We Know!? It was life changing for me, as it was my first introduction to the idea that thoughts create action. And that I actually had a choice as to what I thought. This started me on the journey for self-actualization that continues to this day. Because of the success of Bleep over the next few years, my husband got the opportunity to direct other mind body spirit movies, including the documentary Dreaming Heaven. That's where I met the dream worker Kelly Sullivan Walden, who mentored me in dreamwork and is most responsible for my being here to talk to you today. But I'm not the only filmmaker who had life-changing experiences working in the genre. My guest today, humanitarian filmmaker Emmanuel Itier, also made the journey from commercial films to films with a positive message for humanity, and he's here to speak about them now. Welcome to Dream Power Radio, Emmanuel.
Emmanuel Itier (00:02:11) - Hey. Hello, everybody. Welcome to the show. Let's get going.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:02:16) - Okay. Well, Emmanuel, tell me about the first time you got involved with movies that were all about empowerment.
Emmanuel Itier (00:02:23) - Well, my journey started probably 15 years ago. I was doing, as you said, commercial movies that had not too much meaning. And that's when actually, I met your husband working together on a show called Terminal Speed that never saw the light. But in any case, I was a little bit frustrated with myself not knowing what to do next, and I looked up one day as I was driving to Los Angeles up in the sky and saw to the universe, and I got my answer, and it came to me that I had to do documentaries. Because documentaries are really a political platform for filmmakers, political in the sense of politics, which is for the people, for the city. So I thought, hey, you know, all these little thoughts you have in your mind, let's put them, let's talk to them, let's put them in two documentaries. And the first one I took, really not the simple subject ever. The subject matter was God. So I went around the world for four years looking for God and found some kind of answers to my prayers.
Emmanuel Itier (00:03:32) - Because actually the word God comes from a fundamental Indo-European verb which means to invoke. So if you think about the notion of God, God is all, and all is good. It's really that .it's oneness. It's really the realization that all our molecules are complementary if we choose to be, or in competition if we choose to be. And I think that's the big poem of planet Earth right now, is, sadly, too many people choose to be in competition and not into partnership. Therefore, all the wars, the poverty, the misery. But again, all is God and God is all. So why don't we surrender to each other? Why don't we embrace each other? Why don't we make one? I'm thinking every day, if people had the frame of mind to wake up and say, hey, how can I be of service to you? What can I do to you, Debbie? It would be a different planet. But most people wake up every day and instead of saying, hey, what can I do to you, Debbie? They say, hey, what can you do for me, Debbie? And that's the problem.
Emmanuel Itier (00:04:34) - It's me, myself and I and not me, myself and we. And that's why we are failing.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:04:39) - And this movie was called The Invocation. Correct.
Emmanuel Itier (00:04:43) - That's called the invocation. Correct.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:04:45) - So when you started out to make this film, did you already have a specific goal in mind or were you learning about it as you went along?
Emmanuel Itier (00:04:54) - No, I really learned as I went along. And I think in life you always have, as you said, a dream, a vision for your life. But you improvise most because you really don't know what heck you're doing. Now, do you have to really necessarily the skill yet or the education yet or the tools or you just you can you make it happen because you're doing it. So that's summation notion of God, it's like a being because it's making it happening at one time, one step at a time. And that's exactly what I did. One step at a time, one day at a time. I put together this first movie, The Invocation.
Emmanuel Itier (00:05:35) - It took me over four years, and then since that I had done seven feature documentaries and I'm about to do my eighth, which is called H2O The Intelligence of Water. And by pure serendipity you are talking about What the Bleep, actually, that movie is made with Will Arntz and his wife DeeDee. We had who did What the bleep Do We Know. So it's funny. What goes around comes around again. We are all connected. it's pure magic.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:06:06) - Absolutely. Well one of the themes in Bleep was all about how water carries energy and how we react to that water changes its energy. So does this film take a deeper dive into that concept?
Emmanuel Itier (00:06:24) - Yeah, pretty much. It's really all about the relationship between water and our mind or body, the planet. So it's a very spiritual approach. But there's also a little bit of a business approach, a physical approach. So it's going to be very interesting. I think it will surprise a lot of people.
Emmanuel Itier (00:06:41) - And after this one, which would be done by the end of this year, I'm embarking on a major task which is to study we men. So not you. It's actually a companion movie to the movie about women. This one's going to be about us. What does that mean to be a man today? And it's called The Growth of Men. And I think it's a very timely movie as well, because of what men go through right now. I mean, it's a mess. Look at all the war we are behind and the act of violence and of despair and suicide. And 80% of the problems of the planet are caused by men. So there is definitely a problem with us, you know, to figure it out, we have to fix us.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:07:31) - I think that you're right. It's so timely and more than ever because the wars seemed to multiply around us lately. And I have to say, I think if women were in charge, I think we would have a lot less war.
Emmanuel Itier (00:07:45) - So, yes, I know I'm also an anger management specialist, and the problem we are having is that the brain of women and men have changed, meaning that men are becoming much more compassionate and nurturing and sensitive. And the reason is because we are spending more time with our kids, more time with act of love women kind of little by little, replacing the men, meaning that their brains have changed for the worse. They are becoming more violent; they are becoming dominant. So if you put them in a position of power today, they the result will be the same. Sadly, both men and women right now are in a transformation stage where there's so much violence, so much anger, so much frustration that no matter who is in power, it will be a catastrophe. It is a catastrophe. You already have a lot of women in key positions of power, and nothing is happening. Nothing is changing. So for the chance to really happen, the brain, the mind spirit has to change. And it's going to be a shift.
Emmanuel Itier (00:08:56) - But it's gonna take time and we cannot expect it overnight. I predict that it's going to take at least five decades before we get peace in this world. It's impossible. It's a slow process, very slow. But we're coming back from the dark ages. Look at the history of violence on planet Earth. We were born killers, basically. So to turn us into peace lovers, it's a process. It takes time, but it's about being aware. It's about talking about it. It's about addressing the issues with peace and love, trying to make the transition, the shift.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:09:31) - Do you have a particular audience that you're trying to reach with your films?
Emmanuel Itier (00:09:35) - Everybody, as soon as you can. Put some thoughts together. As soon as your brain can analyze that one and one is two. And so it's at an early age. You should check out our movies because we were trying to make them very inclusive, very articulate, very accessible. So you see a children, a child of five years of age, is not going to have the same understanding then you and I always.
Emmanuel Itier (00:10:03) - But I feel I've got young kids, nine, 11. And when they watch my movies, they get something you can tell. It brings some light, it brings some hope. It brings some extra intelligence education to their brains. So there isn't a specific audience. It's for everybody to really make it for, we the people, you know, very important.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:10:30) - One of your partners in creating some of your films is the actor, Sharon Stone. How did you meet her? And tell me about why she's also drawn to these types of films?
Emmanuel Itier (00:10:40) - Well, Sharon is a true blessing to me because she helped build, in a way, the man I am. She slapped my brain and my butt so many times that it pushed me to be more focused and aware and awakened. So I greatly thank her for this. How did I meet her? It was through a friend, initially with one of my associate producers, Natalie Dubois, who used to work with and still working with her on events and special programs, and we were not directly in touch through Natalie.
Emmanuel Itier (00:11:16) - I was in touch with her partner at the time, and I was showing her cuts of The Invocation, the first movie about God, because for some reason, in my mind, when I thought about a narrator, the voice of Sharon Stone invaded my mind. So it was very weird because I had met her. I had interviewed her as a journalist a couple of times, but I don't know why the voice of Sharon Stone came in my mind for God. It was interesting and it was really, like, obsessive. I couldn't think about anybody else. So I kept tracking her and sending her a cut. And then suddenly she parted ways with her partner. I think there was a fall down with my friend Natalie way back when we were talking like almost 15 years ago. And a bit more, yeah, 15 years ago. So suddenly I was out of touch with Sharon Stone because we didn't have WhatsApp and Face Time at that time. We're talking 2010, 2008, something like this.
Emmanuel Itier (00:12:17) - And to make it short, I went to an event. It was a big debate with a big atheist who'd written book about God, his dad, or something like this. He was facing a rabbi, David Wolpe, who is in my movie The Invocation. So I went to that debate and believe it or not, as I sit down at the pretty much at the same time, come and sit down in front of me, totally in front of me, Sharon Stone. So I'm like, this is insane. What the heck is going on? And I look up and really, God, this is a joke, a nice one. So anyway, as soon as she sat down, the debate started, so it wouldn't have been proper to reach out to her. But I waited patiently and at some time with anguish, because I had to catch a plane that night to go to Vancouver to interview the Spice Girls the next day. Ridiculous. And so the debate finished.
Emmanuel Itier (00:13:22) - I've got like five minutes to rush to the airport and catch my plane and immediately reach out to her shoulder, and she got a little bit surprised, and she turned, and I said, hey, hi, I'm Emmanuel Itier. And she said, oh yeah, you're the good guy. Yeah, the guy doing the movie about God, I'm like, yeah. So she knew who I was, and she gave me a card with a direct cell and email, and from there on, we were at least we connected. And eventually within another 3 or 4 months after showing out the outskirts, she really said, okay, let's do it. I will do your narration. I want to be your partner. And since that, we done four movies together. So it's been really a blessing. And she even became along the way the godmother of my three boys and yeah, thank you, Sharon Stone, I love you.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:14:12) - Well, that's a wonderful way to end this segment. All about love. We are speaking with Emmanuel Itier all about empowering movies, and we'll be right back.
Announcer (00:15:02) - Welcome back to Dream Power Radio with your host, Debbie Spector Weisman.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:15:08) - Yes, welcome back to Dream Power Radio. I'm your host, Debbie Spector Weisman, and we're talking all about powerful movies with Emmanuel Itier. Well, Emmanuel, one of the films that you did with Sharon Stone is a movie called The Cure, which also featured people like Mark Wahlberg and Deepak Chopra, among others. So tell me what that was all about and why was that one important for you to make?
Emmanuel Itier (00:15:32) - So The Cure-- healing the mind, healing the body, healing the planet, it's all about oneness again, about realizing how to cure everything and everything.
Emmanuel Itier (00:15:45) - You need everything. So it is very important movie because it makes you realize that there isn't one cure, that we are the cure all together, and we are surrounded by cures, by healing powers. Whether it's a plant or whether it's a new quantum physics approach. So it's an important movie. And to realize that really until we understand that we are one, one with the environment and therefore we are where we live, we are what we eat. So it's very important to understand that everything is complementary. And, you know, you are talking about people in positions of power, whether they are men and women. It's a problem that we have with all these leaders. They are not healthy in their mind. They have no healthy body. They eat crap, they don't exercise, and they live in a toxic environment. So how can you expect them to be conscious leaders to be effective? They can't. They are victim of their own programming and that's a shame. It's a choice.
Emmanuel Itier (00:16:51) - You have to choose to be focused. You have to choose to self-heal. And then you can do some healing. Then you can do some meeting. But right now I don't see any conscious leaders. And that's why we are fighting. That's why we have to look at the crisis in the Middle East. It's about this government wanted to take more and more land from Palestine and a terror group trying to take hostages and want to annihilate all the Jews. So it's a wound from both sides, you know, it's enough. Enough. Cease fire and stop loving instead of keep the hate going. It makes no sense and keep wanting more and more. More land, more money, more great great great me me me me me. Enough.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:17:38) - Have you had any idea if any of your films have reached people in leadership position, whether they're leaders of the country or--
Emmanuel Itier (00:17:46) - Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. It's actually Sharon who said when we finished The Invocation, Barack Obama was president of the US, and we sent it to the White House.
Now, did they really watch it? Did they get something? I have no idea. But I see the result. There is no impact so far from my movies in key positions. You know, leadership is failing us right now. We are at war and that's ridiculous. There is no reason for war. There is no reason for poverty, for misery. We have plenty of resources. I mean, we have all the water in the world, all the money in the world, all the brains and the genius in the world. Where we don't have is a real united body of leaders working together. It's like they are mafias. We look at them, I mean stupidly fighting every day, stupidly waking up every day and say, hey, how can I bomb them more? How can they kill them? Or can they take them in hostage mode? Again, it's a frame of mind, so it's not going to change overnight.
Emmanuel Itier (00:19:03) - But we have to replace all these people little by little. We conscious people need to run for office, whether it's a mayor or Congress, president. I formed my own political party two years ago when I ran for president of France. I tried. I failed. But you need to get involved. You need to act. You cannot just speak and have little nice shows like we have with you right now. Debbie. I mean, that's one step, one positive step, but you need to take action. And for that, the only thing you can do is run for office. Whatever your office is, it's your church. It's your school board. It's-- I don't care. Get involved. Move out of your couch. Stop whining, stop bitching, and become peace in action. Which were the great words that Sharon Stone had found to conclude our movie The Invocation. Become peace in action.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:19:58) - Very well said, although I do have to say though, in addition to that, I think a lot of people are intimidated or fearful of taking that kind of involvement because they don't believe in themselves enough.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:20:13) - And like one of the missions of this show and one of your movies is to help the individual person realize that they have that power within themselves and that all they have to do is to take that step and take action. In Dreamwork we always say, when you have a dream, it gives you a message. It doesn't mean anything unless you take action on it. And it's the same thing with this. You're right. You have to take action whatever way you can. If you're not going to run for office yourself, take political action. If you're not going to run for office yourself, then work for the person who supports your ideas and get them elected.
Emmanuel Itier (00:20:52) - Yeah, it's all about having faith, and it's the irony of our civilization. We are forced almost preached by all the religion and spiritual movement to believe we have faith. And faith, by the way, comes from a pagan Roman verb, which is fidere, which means to trust. So it's ironic because on one side, we are forced to have faith, blind faith.
Emmanuel Itier (00:21:19) - Just believe in God. Shut up and believe. Shut up and believe. And that's the problem. No, don't shut up and believe. Believe and speak. So have faith. Have trust within yourself and others and then speak out. Act out. So again, it's a change of frame of mind from being a silent partner to becoming an active part. And that's really important. And I think it's gonna happen by little by little. And because of shows like yours or movies like mine or Sharon Stone being involved more and more with different programs. I mean, like last week she was in Saudi Arabia. How courageous is that to go there and speak to a country where, as we know, it's a little bit sketchy in terms of human rights and women's rights and gay rights and so on. So, yeah, you have to have faith. And she has faith. I have faith, we trust ourself. We are strong people. And we going to give power and strength to all the people who have it.
Emmanuel Itier (00:22:30) - But it's been locked because they were told believe and shut up. No, no, Believe and act. Now free your mind, free your being. Just become peace in action.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:22:44) - Very, very well said. I want to go back just to ask you a little question about the mechanics of filmmaking. I mentioned before you had people like Deepak Chopra and of course, Sharon Stone is in your movies. Other people in your films have been, if not people who are household names, people who are experts in their particular field. Is it difficult to get them to be in your movie? How did that work out?
Emmanuel Itier (00:23:10) - Yeah, absolutely. It's like having Sharon Stone. I mean, it's little miracles. I call them my little miracles. I remember, bless his soul because he passed last year, Archbishop Desmond Tutu. You know, he's a Nobel Peace Prize winner. He was a partner of Mandela to free South Africa from apartheid. And I wanted him in in the movie because he was such a great religious leader, spiritual leader.
Emmanuel Itier (00:23:36) - So I reach out to his team, and it took me almost a year before I landed in Cape Town in South Africa and before I landed in his office. And even when I went and knocked at the door of his office in a suburb of Cape Town, he opened the door and he said, who are you? I'm Emmanuel. We're having an interview for my movie. It's like, what? I don't know anything about it, but please welcome and let's have a cup of tea and talk about it. So it was insane because I had spent tons of money to get to him. I thought we had an interview set up, and I arrived and showed up and the interview was unsecure. Obviously, they only got secure after half an hour of having tea with him and making him realize that hopefully he would want to be part of his movie, which he ended up being part of it. So it's been very difficult. Deepak Chopra was a miracle again from my friend Nathalie Du Bois. She knew him or knew his assistant and really, I called, and I got very surprised that he said yes, I know that he said yes once for The Invocation, but he said yes three times because he is also in The Cure and We The People.
Emmanuel Itier (00:24:48) - So it's not easy. Sometimes it takes years to get some of these people, and sometimes you don't get them a certain time you get them and for some reason they change their mind, and you have to remove them from the cast. So it's bizarre, and at the end you have to surrender to the process. You do as good as you can. And again, you have to have faith, trust that it's gonna work. Trust the universe, and indeed the universe has faith in you.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:25:17) - Well, so far, we've talked about movies that you have directed and produced, that dealt with subject matters that you wanted to do. But there's one movie I believe you were hired to direct, which is called Shamanic Trackers, which is about the Quero shamans in Peru. And this one is particularly interesting to me because I was on a similar journey in 2010 when I went down there to help a woman who eventually did make a movie about the shamans, which was again another one of those eye-opening experiences for me. So what was it like for you?
Emmanuel Itier (00:25:52) - Oh, man, that was crazy. That experience going, I forgot the altitude, but we could barely breath. We were in this little village made of rocks, no grass, barely any air. My cameraman Claude Boudin got so many beautiful shots. I got sick, sick, sick. It was crazy. And it was another awakening surrendering to this hostile environment and being one spending time with the Queros and their tribe. It was fantastic, going to see Machu Picchu, which is such a legendary, mysterious place. Fantastic. I mean, again, my journey has been so amazing because it has transformed me one cell at a time. And 15 years ago when I embarked doing all these humanitarian documentaries. And now I'm definitely not the same man. I want to be an even better man. I want to believe I'm much less selfish and much less about me, myself and I and more about we, we, the people. So it's I think everybody's ultimately along the way, including the lady who hired me to go to Peru. That was a fantastic experience.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:27:10) - Well, Emmanuel, I just have one final question for you, which is how could people find out more about you and your films?
Emmanuel Itier (00:27:16) - It's very easy. You just tap my name on Google -- Emmanuel Itier and you'll get to me, one way or another. We are all connected. It's all about oneness. So have faith. Reach out to me. I'm always there to help people, given whatever little bit of my voice needs and guidance. And I'm here for you people, I love you.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:27:41) - Well, we love you too. Thank you so much for being on Dream Power Radio today.
Emmanuel Itier (00:27:46) - Thank you. Bless you.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:27:48) - We've been speaking all about films that are meant to empower and enrich our lives with humanitarian director Emmanuel Itier. I hope you've enjoyed today's program. If so, please hit that subscribe button so you don't miss out on any future episodes. Till next time, this is Debbie Spector Weisman saying sweet dreams everybody.
Announcer (00:28:07) - You've been listening to Dream Power Radio with your host, Debbie Spector Weisman. For more information on Debbie or to sign up for her newsletter. Go to Dream Power Radio dot com. This has been Dream Power Radio.