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.
Deep in the jungles of Peru, a silky anteater is fighting to stay awake and a mother humming bird is struggling to raise her chick. Through millions of years of evolution they have developed bizarre relationships and unexpected strategies to overcome them changing conditions, but for all their ingenuity, they were never prepared for the arrival of a new species on the scene.
The challenges to keep the forest standing
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.
Faced with the advancement of eucalyptus plantations, a farmer and an indigenous community stand as resistance and reveal the impact of monoculture on the environment, in contrast to traditional ways of life. The enemy can also be green.
Until the 1950s, the Waorani were able to successfully defended their area of settlement – today’s Yasuni National Park in the Ecuadorian Amazon – with the aid of spears. Then Christian missionaries entered the thick rain forest and paved the way for an oil company. Nowadays many of the tribes are estranged as some want to benefit from the short-term money the company is offering while others fight to preserve their land, culture and independence under all circumstances.
Hamilton Souther is the founder of Blue Morpho Tours, a company that caters to ayahuasca tourists in the Peruvian Amazon. Souther talks about the events that led him to Amazonian shamanism. Five first-time ayahuasca drinkers on a nine-day retreat with Blue Morpho relate their experiences.
Every two weeks, the world loses a language and with it, a piece of human history. Ese Eja is one of the language in danger of extinction. Many stories and myths have been forgotten, but through dreams, the memory of the ancestors fight for remaining in the Ese Eja community.
“El Río” aims to illustrate the unique relationship between the indigenous people of the Peruvian Amazon and their land. By drawing attention to and discussing the differences between western ideologies and those found in the Amazon, the documentary increases awareness of the emotional and spiritual effects of environmental resource depletion.
Shot in Venezuela over a 30-year period, this documentary depicts the life and work of José Maria Korta, the controversial Jesuit Missionary with the Ye'kwana people of the Amazon.
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.
Une histoire amazonienne
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.
Itapoa - Un proyecto que camina
Amazônia, a Nova Minamata?
Povo da Floresta
Sachamama is a retreat lodge in Peruvian Amazonia. There, Francisco Montes leads ayahuasca ceremonies for tourists seeking insight and healing.
The last two surviving members of the Piripkura people, a nomadic tribe in the Mato Grosso region of Brazil, struggle to maintain their indigenous way of life amidst the region's massive deforestation. Living deep in the rainforest, Pakyî and Tamandua live off the land relying on a machete, an ax, and a torch lit in 1998.
Peer through the lenses of some of the world's most celebrated nature and wildlife photographers and descend into the Amiga River Basin, the largest rain forest on earth. Pulsing through the center of these pristine tropics is the Rio Negro, also known as the Golden River, containing the purest water on the planet as well as a spectacular array of aquatic life. Narrator Grant Goodeve lets you in on some of its most amazing secrets.
In 2019, the Brazilian government coordinates the largest and riskiest expedition of the last decades into the Amazon rainforest to search for a group of isolated indigenous people in vulnerability and promote their first contact with non-indigenous. Bruno Pereira, who would later be murdered in the same region and turned into an international symbol in favor of the indigenous and the forest, leads the expedition.