Lost Cities of the Amazon

The film presents aspects of Rio Negro and Rio Branco, showing the services of Dr. H. Rice's expedition.

The history of Amos, a town in Abitibi-Témiscamingue (Quebec).

An exploration of Rodez Cathedral and its stained glass windows: praying figures and scientific imagery. A study on color, repetition and flickering consisting of 292 photographs.

The Last Apostle follows real-life Indiana Jones and world-renowned archeologist, Dr. Mark Fairchild, as he travels the historic route of Saint Paul the Apostle. Over the course of two weeks, Fairchild travels from the ancient city of Istanbul to the wild.

Examining theories about the discovery of America long before Christopher Columbus' 1492 voyage by explorers from such places as China, Japan, Wales and Ireland.

Luis Tayori is an indigenous Harakbut descendant whose origins trace back to the depths of the Peruvian jungle. Years after the first contact with Dominican missionaries, Luis recounts the memories of his childhood and those of his grandparents.

An unnamed passer-by is forced to trace a circular route inside an abandoned tram station, facing loss and time. The broken walls act as a channel, transmitting fragmentary, blurred and analogical memories. 

One man, one camera, one goal...to capture the essence of adventure. An experimental, often abstract new type of filmmaking process creating color rich visuals combined with a lush soundtrack that grounds the project. A unique cinematic experience.

5000 years ago the ancient Elamites established a glorious civilization that lasted about three millennia. They created marvelous works in architecture and craftsmanship. These works of art depict the lifestyle, thoughts, and beliefs of the Elamites.

In Greek mythology, there were colossal creatures with fifty heads and a hundred arms. In the manner of an illustration in a bestiary, this short film describes the titan in a contemporary city. The concrete masses on the outskirts of Mexico City are the current version of the giant, recorded through 16mm film.

Set in the Mayan civilization, when a man's idyllic presence is brutally disrupted by a violent invading force, he is taken on a perilous journey to a world ruled by fear and oppression where a harrowing end awaits him. Through a twist of fate and spurred by the power of his love for his woman and his family he will make a desperate break to return home and to ultimately save his way of life.

It’s spring in the Ecuadorian Amazon and the Uyantza festival is underway with the community celebrating all that the forest has to offer. Meanwhile, news is breaking around the world that a novel virus is spreading and a state of emergency is declared across the country. As people test positive for COVID-19 in the community, some families decide to leave and head deeper into the jungle. Disconnected from school, friends, the internet, and work, one family learns to reconnect with life in the forest. The children begin to unlearn the national curriculum, and instead are taught Indigenous knowledge that mainstream schools normally pass over. As COVID-19 wreaks havoc around the planet, the family reconnect to their ancestral ways, but as news arrives that Ecuador’s lockdown will end soon, will the family choose to return?

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.

Struggling with a mid-life crisis, Robert Oelman leaves his psychology career in the early 1990s to photograph rare and exotic insects. After moving from the United States to Colombia, he forms a special bond with his subjects in the Amazon rainforest. This connection enables him to make striking photographic images of new and undocumented species. After more than 20 years of traveling, searching, and photographing, his quest culminates with a New York City gallery show where he finally shares his images with the public.

A series of suicides among youths who had to travel far from home to go to school, shocked their indigenous community in the Colombian Amazon. They are different cultures in the frantic friction of our time, it is a generation of young people born from the meeting of both cultures who are hanging before the mirages of a foreign world.

In year 1250 B.C. during the late Bronze age, two emerging nations begin to clash. Paris, the Trojan prince, convinces Helen, Queen of Sparta, to leave her husband Menelaus, and sail with him back to Troy. After Menelaus finds out that his wife was taken by the Trojans, he asks his brother Agamemnon to help him get her back. Agamemnon sees this as an opportunity for power. They set off with 1,000 ships holding 50,000 Greeks to Troy.

The story of an expedition down the Orinoco and Amazon rivers in 1560 by Spanish soldiers searching for the fabled city of gold, El Dorado.

The history of the Teatro Amazonas in Manaus, an opera house located in the middle of the Amazon rainforest, whose construction, between 1884 and 1896, depended on the labor exploitation of the local indigenous populations, provides an insight into the cultural, social and political situation in Brazil.

In the frigid waters off of Russia’s Bering Strait, Inuit and Chukchi hunters today still seek out the giant sea mammals that have provided their people with food since time immemorial. It is known, that the whale hunting today is controversial and subject to international criticism and regulations. But the Inuit and Chukchi hunt is permitted by international law because of the whaling is the foundation of their culture and their life. The contemporary story of elders Aleksandr and Aleksei blends seamlessly with that of “the woman who gave birth to a whale” and other ancient myths, told here in vivid animation, in this ongoing struggle for survival and preservation of a traditional lifestyle in one of the most remote places on earth.

Walter Bonatti - con i muscoli, con il cuore, con la testa