L'Iboga: Les Hommes du bois sacré

A caving expedition recently discovered a community of dwarf crocodiles living in the Abanda Caves, Gabon. The crocs are living in pitch darkness, hunt bats and some have bright-orange skin. Part of the original team returns to find out more about this bizarre phenomenon. It's mission impossible to access the crocs world and there's no way of knowing what they might find.

Povo da Floresta

How do we heal our deepest wounds? Two combat veterans, suffering from severe trauma, abandon pharmaceuticals in order to seek healing through psychedelic medicines. Recent scientific research has shown that these substances can help people to recover from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Beyond the personal stories, From Shock to Awe raises fundamental questions about war, the pharmaceutical industry, and the US legal system.

The traditional healers in the Swiss and French mountains.

It is late 2004, and 34-year-old Englishman Alistair Appleton is about to fly from London to the Brazilian coast, where he will drink ayahuasca for the first time. With wit, insight, and sensitivity, Alistair shares this experience with us, and chats with some fellow participants before and after the ayahuasca ceremonies. For the past few years, Alistair had been working as a television presenter. In 2000, he started making trips to the Centre for World Peace and Health in Scotland to learn how to meditate. When clinical psychologist Silvia Polivoy opened an ayahuasca healing center in Bahia in 2004, Alistair faced his fears and seized the opportunity to attend.

Benito Arévalo is an onaya: a traditional healer in a Shipibo-Konibo community in Peruvian Amazonia. He explains something of the onaya tradition, and how he came to drink the plant medicine ayahuasca under his father's tutelage. Arévalo leads an ayahuasca ceremony for Westerners, and shares with us something of his understanding of the plants and the onaya tradition.

Filmed in the jungles of Peru, shaman Don Jose Campos introduces the practices and benefits of Ayahuasca, the psychoactive plant brew that has been used for healing and visionary journeys by Amazonian shamans for at least a thousand years.

Magie & Medizin - Die Geheimnisse des Papyrus Ebers

Aya: Awakenings' is an experiential journey by journalist Rak Razam into the world and visions of ayahuasca, a powerful hallucinogenic plant medicine from the Amazon, capturing the experience and the western dynamic around it in unprecedented detail.

“I am a hypochondriac”, admits Rosa Von Praunheim, the icon of the gay movement, right at the beginning at the film. The director, who turned seventy in 2012, is afraid of cancer, and he actually suffers from glaucoma, with osteoarthritis in his big toe. Von Praunheim is interested in alternative medicine and goes on a foray into the scene.

American tourists at SpiritQuest Sanctuary, a medicine lodge in Peru, share their thoughts about the traditional medicine ayahuasca, and their motivations for drinking it. Don Howard Lawler, founder of SpiritQuest, describes ayahuasca and its beneficial effects, as do the filmmakers themselves.

This film is an initiatory journey among the Fangs of Gabon and the Shipibos of Peru. With the sound of traditional instruments like the mogongo (arc in the mouth), the holy harp, and the Icaros, we discover the traditional peoples’ wisdom.

Sachamama is a retreat lodge in Peruvian Amazonia. There, Francisco Montes leads ayahuasca ceremonies for tourists seeking insight and healing.

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.

This documentary examines ayahuasca shamanism near Iquitos (a metropolis in the Peruvian Amazon), and the tourism it has attracted. The filmmakers talk with two ayahuasqueros, Percy Garcia and Ron Wheelock, as well as ayuahuasca tourists and local people connected with the ayahuasca industry.

This documentary introduces viewers to qigong, a 5,000-year-old method of cultivating and circulating the life energy called qi. It relates some of the history of qigong, as well as scientific evidence of efficacy. We also see qigong used in various contexts in modern China, and hear from Chinese doctors and qigong practitioners. The film was originally produced for the Public Broadcasting Service in the United States.

A documentary film about Tibetan traditional medicine.

Auf Messers Schneide - Eine Geschichte der Chirurgie

Three friends fly from Europe to Gabon to undergo a Bwiti initiation ceremony. After ritual bathing, they will eat the root bark of the iboga tree.

Men and women of the !Kung people in Ojokhoe, Namibia perform healing dances by firelight. First we see men perform the giraffe dance, and then women perform the !gwa dance.