The Amazon rain forest, 1979. The crew of Fitzcarraldo (1982), a film directed by German director Werner Herzog, soon finds itself with problems related to casting, tribal struggles and accidents, among many other setbacks; but nothing compared to dragging a huge steamboat up a mountain, while Herzog embraces the path of a certain madness to make his vision come true.
The documentary recreates the mythical journey made by the native peoples of Sarayaku in the Amazon, who navigated down the river for months until they reached Kachi Urku, the mountain of salt.
An encounter with the last shamans of Bolivia's Beni River Valley brings the audience on an intimate spiritual journey through the Amazon Rainforest. Navigating the viewer through lush landscapes on a ritual of transcendence and forgiveness, this experimental documentary recreates for audiences the experience of the potent and sacred Ayahuasca Vine.
Indigenous chief Juma Xipaia fights to protect tribal lands despite assassination attempts. Her struggle intensifies after learning she's pregnant, while her husband, Special Forces ranger Hugo Loss, stands by her side.
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.
Discovered about twenty years ago, the immense masses of water vapor that fly over the Amazon, called "flying rivers", fascinate researchers. Their future could be intimately linked to climate change.
At the edge of the Yangtze River, not far from the Three Gorges Dam, young men and women take up employment on a cruise ship, where they confront rising waters and a radically changing China.
Povo da Floresta
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.
Explore the mysterious Amazon through the amazing IMAX experience. Amazon celebrates the beauty, vitality and wonder of the rapidly disappearing rain forest.
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.
Back in 2012 I had my very first Ayahuasca ceremony and, needless to say, I was terrified. But it ended up entirely changing my life and that of my future family. Which is why I decided to revisit the medicine in 2018, participating in three Ayahuasca ceremonies over the course of one week in Costa Rica, and document the process. In the film, we tackle my personal story of trying to build London Real into a global media and transformation company while also struggling with my own disconnection from friends, family and my own species. We also dive deep into the division and tribalism currently facing all of us around the world.
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.
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.
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.
A documentary film about Tibetan traditional medicine.
A documentary about environment destruction in the Amazon and the tribes living there. Produced for the 48th anniversary of MBC, Korea. A brilliant records of the itinerary for 250 days through the Amazon.
Une histoire amazonienne
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.
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.