Out of the spiritual chaos of the 1960s, more strange cults and unorthodox messiahs have emerged than ever. Charles Manson is seen as the annoying result of libertarianism of the 1960s - the Cain who murdered the Abel from The Love Generation. Or in the words of one commentator; "the Elvis of alienation."
A life documentary of a woman who was shunned for being possessed by spirits as a girl, oppressed for following superstitions as an adult, how she grows to be a great shaman who embraces the pain of all people, and how she comes to be honored as a national treasure of Korea with her outstanding artistic talents throughout Korea's tumultuous history.
When a Mongolian nomadic family's newest camel colt is rejected by its mother, a musician is needed for a ritual to change her mind.
In the same vein as Meri's other documentations, this one takes advantage of the glasnost policy to discuss the social and ecologic impact of the Russian oil industry on the natives and the lands they inhabit.
This short documentary tells the intensely personal story of Namrata Gill – one of the many real-life inspirations for Deepa Mehta’s Heaven on Earth – in her own words. After six years, Gill courageously leaves an abusive relationship and launches a surprising new career.
Stay inside all the time? Never take your shoes off? Feel fatigued? You could have Natural Deficit Disorder. Learn how the earth can help neutralize the disease-causing radicals in the body, by doing something as simple as swimming or walking barefoot.
On the threshold of her old age, Dolores faces a wall full of memories.
Rae Ripple, a welder from the outskirts of West Texas transforms neglected metal into works of art and in the process finds healing from her traumatic past.
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.
Herlinda Augustin is a Shipibo healer who lives with her family in Peruvian Amazonia. Will she and other healers be able to maintain their ancient tradition despite Western encroachment?
An African narrator tells the story of earth history, the birth of the universe and evolution of life. Beautiful imagery makes this movie documentary complete.
Sujin and her grandmother are shamans living in the mountains. It is their important daily routine to offer purified water to gods and tell a fortune for troubled hearts. During high school, Sujin works hard to go to college with hopes of escaping her fate and living a normal life. But the excitement of busy college life deepens her conflict with her grandmother.
Sacred explores cultural and religious ritual as it relates to life’s cycles: birth, adolescence, marriage, aging and other key passages of life.
Tchai is the word used by Ju/'hoansi to describe getting together to dance and sing; n/um can be translated as medicine, or supernatural potency. In the 1950's, when this film was shot, Ju/'hoansi gathered for "medicine dances" often, usually at night, and sometimes such dances lasted until dawn.
Best friends travel though Latin America meeting shamans, experimenting with plant medicines, and wondering about what makes a life well-lived when one of them might have half the time to live it.
Wheel of Time is Werner Herzog's photographed look at the largest Buddhist ritual in Bodh Gaya, India.
Documentary film making at its best as it narrates very exotic and esoteric rituals of the primitive peoples of Africa.
A personal, scientific, mystical exploration of Amazonian curanderismo, focus on Ayahuasca and Master Plants, their healing and visionary properties and risks, along with the Shipibo people and their songs.
As queer trans and gender non-conforming children of the Vietnamese diaspora, we are fragmented at the crossroads of being displaced from not only a sense of belonging to our ancestral land, but also our own bodies which are conditioned by society to stray away from our most authentic existence. Yet these bodies of ours are the vessels we sail to embark on a lifetime voyage of return to our original selves. It is our bodies that navigate the treacherous tides of normative systems that impose themselves on our very being. And it is our bodies that act as community lighthouses for collective liberation. Ultimately, the landscape of our bodies is our blueprint to remembering, to healing, to blooming.
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.