Don Emilio is a humble, 63-year-old man who lives in the Amazon rainforest, seven miles from the city of Iquitos, Peru. For all of his adult life he has worked as a curandero and vegetalista, a traditional healer. He estimates that in his career he has treated more than 2,500 clients. Through the camera lens of anthropologist Luis Eduardo Luna, Don Emilio tells us about his practice, his beliefs, his community, and his life. He shows us how he prepares ayahuasca and other herbal medicines. Finally, we see Don Emilio treat a man who has come to him for help, and hear from a poor woman who has brought her infant son for medical care.
Narrated by Academy Award winners Sissy Spacek and Herbie Hancock, River of Gold is the disturbing account of a clandestine journey into Peru's Amazon rainforest to uncover the savage unraveling of pristine jungle. What will be the fate of this critical region of priceless biodiversity as these extraordinarily beautiful forests are turned into a hellish wasteland?
The true story of Joe Simpson and Simon Yates' disastrous and nearly-fatal mountain climb of 6,344m Siula Grande in the Cordillera Huayhuash in the Peruvian Andes in 1985.
A few decades after the destruction of the Inca Empire, a Spanish expedition led by the infamous Aguirre leaves the mountains of Peru and goes down the Amazon River in search of the lost city of El Dorado. When great difficulties arise, Aguirre’s men start to wonder whether their quest will lead them to prosperity or certain death.
Colorful widescreen travelogue along the Amazon River jungle of Peru, featuring an indigenous village carnival and a snake dance.
The Shipibo-Konibo people of Peruvian Amazon decorate their pottery, jewelry, textiles, and body art with complex geometric patterns called kené. These patterns also have corresponding songs, called icaros, which are integral to the Shipibo way of life. This documentary explores these unique art forms, and one Shipibo family's efforts to safeguard the tradition.
In a remote Peruvian city, lives Honorata Vilca, an illiterate woman of Quechua descent who sells candies more than 20 years ago, with the rain will cry to the sky itself.
Back from war in Afghanistan, a young British soldier struggling with depression and PTSD finds a second chance in the Amazon rainforest when he meets an American scientist, and together they foster an orphaned baby ocelot.
Rascar Capac, the sinister creature featured on Hergé's album The Seven Crystal Balls (1948), has left its mark on many generations of readers. To draw it, the Belgian cartoonist was probably inspired by a mummy exhibited in the first pre-Columbian exhibition organized by the Brussels Cinquantenaire Museum in 1923. Two intrepid archaeologists embark on a fascinating journey to reconstruct the story of the mysterious mummy.
James, giving himself 12 months before he has "a license to kill himself," sets off to the Amazon rainforest with hopes of finding a shaman who can save his life.
The documentary follows an expedition led by the adventurer and photographer Jorge Juan Anhalzer, in the heart of the Llanganati, in search of the enormous Inca treasure hidden in the Ecuadorian mountains.
Women have always sought ways to terminate unwanted pregnancies, despite powerful patriarchal structures and systems working against them. This film provides a historical overview of how church, state and the medical establishment have determined policies concerning abortion. From this cross-cultural survey--filmed in Ireland, Japan, Thailand, Peru, Colombia, and Canada--emerges one reality: only a small percentage of the world's women has access to safe, legal operations.
Deep in the Andean mountains lays a mysterious ruin named Machu Picchu. For 400 years it sat abandoned on its misty cliff, the quintessential lost city in the jungle. Rediscovered in 1911, it contained no written records or carvings, nothing that could shed light on its history. For a century since, it has defied the endless scores of visitors and scientists who attempted to understand its purpose. Who were the mysterious people who built it and why did they build it here? Today an international team of archeologists, engineers and scientists are finally piecing together the clues. Together they are discovering astonishing new burials, revealing the intricacies of its ingenious engineering and finally decoding the secrets of Machu Picchu.
In the mountains of Peru, an environmental scientist discovers ancient artifacts submerged beneath the headwaters of the Amazon; his findings could save this sacred landscape from mining devastation.
STATE OF FEAR takes place in Peru, yet serves as a cautionary tale for a world engaged in a "global war on terror." It dramatizes the human and societal costs a democracy faces when it embarks on a "war" against terror, a "war" potentially without end, all too easily exploited by unscrupulous leaders seeking personal political gain.
Through a mix of crime-lab science, archeology, and history, this NOVA/National Geographic special presents new evidence that is changing what we know about the final days of the once-mighty Inca Empire.
Documentary presenting the theory and application of the Theology of Liberation via interviews to priests from humble parishes in the slums of Lima. A fruitful labor of a Catholic Church sector committed to address social issues.
A bedridden war veteran relives his experiences endured in the battles of Tacna and Arica between Chile and Peru, revealing untold secrets and mysteries that history never told.
An experimental documentary short about the terrorism in Peru in 1986. Using archive footage, the director deconstructs the massacre in a successive historical actions choreography and an atmospheric sound mix alternating the imminence of both the massacre and the oblivion.
After years of suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, six US veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan travel to Peru on a quest for healing. With the help and guidance of three brothers who are traditional healers, they take ayahuasca and other plant medicines during a 10-day retreat in the Amazon rainforest.