Big River Man
Follows Martin Strel as he attempts to cover 3,375 miles of the Amazon River in what is being billed as the world's longest swim.
Scenes of daily life in the Indian communities of Ecuador.
Follows Martin Strel as he attempts to cover 3,375 miles of the Amazon River in what is being billed as the world's longest swim.
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.
Xapiri is a Yanomami term that characterizes the shamans, male spirits (xapiri thëpë) and also auxiliary spirits (xapiri pë). Xapiri is an experimental film about Yanomami shamanism that was filmed during a meeting of 37 shamans at the Watoriki Reserve, Roraima, in March of 2011. The film was designed to take into account two different notions of image: those of the Yanomami and ours. Therefore, it does not set out to explain shamanism, its methods or procedures, but to allow different cultures to visualize and feel the way in which the shamans “embody” the spirits, their bodies and voices.
Over the centuries, explorers traded tales of a lost civilization amid the dense Amazonian rainforest. Scientists dismissed the legends as exaggerations, believing that the rainforest could not sustain such a huge population—until now. A new generation of explorers armed with 21st-century technology has uncovered remarkable evidence that could reinvent our understanding of the Amazon and the indigenous peoples who lived there. Using CGI and dramatic re-creations, National Geographic re-imagines the banks of the Amazon 500 years ago, teeming with inhabitants living in the Lost Cities of the Amazon.
With Pete Smith providing dry off-screen commentary, we watch some serious fishing: a marlin caught near Catalina, a hammerhead shark caught then wrestled in a small rowboat near Baja, the largest (721 pounds) great white shark caught to date in California waters, Chinook Indians catching salmon at Celilo Falls in Oregon - each with his designated place on the river where his ancestors stood, and, last, a crew on a boat off Mexico hoisting and hurling tuna using unbarbed hooks (baited only with a feather) as fast as they can as long as the school is there - backbreaking work - but a $25,000 catch.
In Peruvian Amazonia, for the first time in many years, a Shipibo–Konibo community prepare to perform the Aneshiati ceremony: a time of dance, song, festive clothing, and drink—including the sacred tea ayahuasca.
For consumers, bananas are a delicious and nutritious start to the day, a healthy snack and a fixture in our fruit bowls. For millions of residents in the banana lands, the production of bananas means social upheaval, violence and pesticide poisoning. Banana Land explores the origins of these disparate realities, and opens the conversation on how workers, producers and consumers can address this disconnect.
"When the shamans stop dancing and life in the rainforest loses its balance, the sky will collapse and come to crush everything." This wisdom is passed down from generation to generation by the Yanomami of Brazil. But gold miners are polluting the rivers, shamans are dying, the rainforest is disappearing and the earth is getting hotter. Davi Kopenawa, a tribal leader and spokesman for the Yanomami, has been fighting relentlessly against the colonization of his land for 40 years. He warns Westerners that when the sky collapses, they too will be crushed. Why don't they listen? Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
Explore the mysterious Amazon through the amazing IMAX experience. Amazon celebrates the beauty, vitality and wonder of the rapidly disappearing rain forest.
An environmental account of Henry Ford’s Amazon experience decades after its failure. The story addressed by the film begins in 1927, when the Ford Motor Company attempted to establish rubber plantations on the Tapajós River, a primary tributary of the Amazon. This film addresses the recent transition from failed rubber to successful soybean cultivation for export, and its implication for land usage.
A vision from Limbo, where the canoeist of the eternal lake floats in his boat, between sleep and wakefulness. When he sleeps, he dreams of the everyday of a parallel time. when he wakes up, the same song haunts him again and again. his boat, “ara” (time, in guarani) travels through time like a shooting star.
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?
Four Westerners with various ailments travel to Peruvian Amazonia to drink ayahuasca, a traditional medicine renowned for its healing powers.
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.
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.
Discover the heart-wrenching tale of Ecuador’s forgotten guitar road in “Vanishing Strings of the Andes.” Witness the struggle to preserve an age-old generational craft practised high in the Andes mountains before it’s too late...
Steeped in the long oral tradition of Waorani storytelling, Gange Yeti shares her own coming-of-age story as a young Waorani woman living deep within the Amazon rainforest. Following Gange and her community for over 11 years, the film captures her transition from a quiet teenager into a confident young mother at a critical turning point for her culture and rainforest. As the granddaughter of one of the last Waorani elders that lived in complete isolation before outside contact, Gange is determined to capture her grandmother’s unique experience while she still can -- balancing school, motherhood, and tradition along the way.
In powerful images, alternating between documentary observation and staged sequences, and dense soundscapes, Luiz Bolognesi documents the Indigenous community of the Yanomami and depicts their threatened natural environment in the Amazon rainforest.
Narrated by Academy Award winners Sissy Spacek and Herbie Hancock, River of Gold is the disturbing account of a clandestine journey into Peru's Amazon rainforest to uncover the savage unraveling of pristine jungle. What will be the fate of this critical region of priceless biodiversity as these extraordinarily beautiful forests are turned into a hellish wasteland?