(2) The Einstein Effect - The Mysterious World Of The Savants
Matt Savage was diagnosed with autism when he was 4. When he was 6, Matt Savage learned to play piano nearly overnight. By 7 he began composing jazz and in the same year his first CD with his own composition was released. Now considered the ‘Mozart of Jazz’ he plays the piano like a 40 year old. How can Matt know all these things about music when he never learned them? Is there a musical chip in our brains, which already knows everything about music? That we normally just don´t have access to?
Stephen Wiltshire is drawing-savant and was diagnosed with autism when he was 3. He will fly over Rome for 45 minutes and then draw the panorama of Eternal City – from memory. Will he remember the exact number of windows of important buildings?
The brain researcher Prof. Michael Fitzgerald from Dublin believes that there is a interrelation between the extraordinary creativity and the disconnections in the autistic brains. Einstein, Newton, Mozart and Beethoven were such extreme gifted people, because their brains weren´t wired appropriate – like the brains of Matt Savage and Stephen Wiltshire.
At the university of Sydney, Prof. Allan Snyder tries to disable parts of the brains of his probands for a short time to get more creativity out of them.
Where does ‘creativity’ come from? How can humans ‘invent’ brand new things, languages or melodies? And how can Savants perform things they have never ‘learnt’?
Stephen Wiltshire is drawing-savant and was diagnosed with autism when he was 3. He will fly over Rome for 45 minutes and then draw the panorama of Eternal City – from memory. Will he remember the exact number of windows of important buildings?
The brain researcher Prof. Michael Fitzgerald from Dublin believes that there is a interrelation between the extraordinary creativity and the disconnections in the autistic brains. Einstein, Newton, Mozart and Beethoven were such extreme gifted people, because their brains weren´t wired appropriate – like the brains of Matt Savage and Stephen Wiltshire.
At the university of Sydney, Prof. Allan Snyder tries to disable parts of the brains of his probands for a short time to get more creativity out of them.
Where does ‘creativity’ come from? How can humans ‘invent’ brand new things, languages or melodies? And how can Savants perform things they have never ‘learnt’?
Shot in HDTV on original locations in Germany, France, USA, Australia, Italy, Ireland and the United Kingdom
Beautiful Minds was licenced to more than 50 countries around the world.
It was nominated for the German TV Prize (Deutscher Fernsehpreis), the Adolf- Grimme-Prize and for Prix Europa.
First aired:
21st February 2006, 19.00 pm on Arte, 22nd March 2006, 23.15 pm on ARD, 27th April 2006, 20.15 pm on 3 Sat, 23rd May 2006, 20.15 pm on Phoenix.
Written, directed and produced by: Petra Höfer and Freddie Röckenhaus
Director of Photography: Axel Petrovan
Video Editor: Jörg Wegner
Producer: Francesca D‘Amicis, Ralf Hoppe, Friederike Schmidt-Vogt
Line Producer: Svenja Mandel
Narration: Benjamin Völz
Commissioning Editors: Gerhard Widmer (Radio Bremen)
A colourFIELD production commissioned by Radio Bremen and ARTE