L'Iboga: Les Hommes du bois sacré

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.

A race is on to save Gabon’s Moukalaba-Doudou National Park and the silverback gorillas that call it home. Once, this area was protected by a thriving oil industry, but now, big companies are moving out and the logging industry is poised to move in. Ecotourism could be the only way to prevent the trees of this rainforest from coming down, but a team of conservationists needs to make the gorillas of Gabon tolerant of humans first. Follow them as they get up-close with the gorillas, study their moves, and journey to war-torn Central African Republic to learn the secrets of successful gorilla habituation.

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.

Tackling colossal waterfalls in Gabon, kayakers Adrian Mattern, Dane Jackson, Bren Orton and Kalob Grady's story of high-stakes adventure reveals the gritty reality behind the veneer of social media.

This film explores the integration of religion and plant-based medicine in an Ewe vodu community in southern Togo. A village priest healer, local ethnobotanists, and a religious marketeer guide us through the medicinal and religious uses of many local plants and herbs. Here in West Africa, plant-based medicines permeate spirituality and illness, and help protect the social order of the community.

Sick in Africa follows the true stories of several Mozambicans from the Yawo tribe who are ill, but searching for healing and answers.

Povo da Floresta

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.

A documentary film about Tibetan traditional medicine.

Gabon's Loango National Park is home to a group of western lowland gorillas who have become accustomed to biologists who have studied them for almost twenty years. This documentary presents an intimate look at the silverback Kamaya and his family and features a newborn baby gorilla, brave researchers, forest elephants, buffalos and the last remaining wild coastline in the African tropics.

Mike Fay and Enric Sala are on a quest to protect the rich coastal waters of Gabon, home to surfing hippos, sharks and humpback whales.

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.

Bordered by the Atlantic Ocean and stretching 40 miles into the jungled interior, we kayaked and portaged more than 200 miles around the park's perimeter, seeing this wild country from a new and different perspective. Along the way we encountered river-swimming elephants, manatees, tarpon, surfing hippos, gorillas and more. By trip's end it was hard to decide which were the most beautiful, and the most difficult, parts of the expedition, but it was eye opening, for us all.

This documentary focuses on the Green Gabon program in the Congo Basin and explores rainforest conservation efforts as a way to stem climate change.

Shipibo healer Ricardo Amaringo describes how he prepares, teaches, and shares the plant medicine ayahuasca. Olivia and Julian Arévalo sing examples of icaros (healing songs) in the Shipibo language.

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

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.

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.

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.

Plant Explorer Richard Evans Schultes was a real life Indiana Jones whose discoveries of hallucinogenic plants laid the foundation for the psychedelic sixties. Now in this two hour History Channel TV Special, his former student Wade Davis, follows in his footsteps to experience the discoveries that Schultes brought to the western world. Shot around the planet, from Canada to the Amazon, we experience rarely seen native hallucinogenic ceremonies and find out the true events leading up to the Psychedelic Sixties. Featuring author/adventurer Wade Davis ("Serpent and the Rainbow"), Dr. Andrew Weil, the Grateful Dead's Bob Weir and many others, this program tells the story of the discovery of peyote, magic mushrooms and beyond: one man's little known quest to classify the Plants of the Gods. Richard Evans Schultes revolutionized science and spawned another revolution he never imagined.