Living with Spirits: 10 Days in the Jungle with Ayahuasca

Tuire Kayapó

‘Tuire Kayapó’ (First Contact) is a moving portrait of the most important female chief of the Kayapó people, known for her environmental activism in the Brazilian Amazon since the late 1980s. In her first interview ever, which took place on January 13th, 2017 in her village in Kaprankrere, Tuire speaks about the issues of the Kayapó people such as deforestation, expansion of the cities towards the Indigenous territories, demarcation, discrimination, national agricultural policies, public administration, corruption and infectious diseases as a result of all this.

Tóxico, Texaco, Tóxico

The imagination of history in Ecuador never thought that oil, “its redeeming hope”, discovered in the Lago Agrio No. 1 well, was going to mean the beginning of the worst environmental catastrophe on the planet. Thirty years of operation and exploitation of the Texaco company, forever transformed the rivers and estuaries, the forests and the life of the indigenous communities in the northern Amazon of Ecuador.

The Last Forest

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.

Don Emilio and His Little Doctors

Don Emilio is a humble, 63-year-old man who lives in the Amazon rainforest, seven miles from the city of Iquitos, Peru. For all of his adult life he has worked as a curandero and vegetalista, a traditional healer. He estimates that in his career he has treated more than 2,500 clients. Through the camera lens of anthropologist Luis Eduardo Luna, Don Emilio tells us about his practice, his beliefs, his community, and his life. He shows us how he prepares ayahuasca and other herbal medicines. Finally, we see Don Emilio treat a man who has come to him for help, and hear from a poor woman who has brought her infant son for medical care.

The Lost Children

After a plane crash, four indigenous children fight to survive in the Colombian Amazon using ancestral wisdom as an unprecedented rescue mission unfolds.

Toroboro: The Name of the Plants

A botanical expedition in Ecuador's Amazon becomes a medium for an indigenous Huaorani community to remember the genocidal colonization it suffered in the 1960s. Meanwhile, a group of ecologists from the capital tries to stop oil exploitation in the last remaining forests where the isolated Huaoranis still live, who to this day refuse to come into contact with civilization.

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.

The Last Shaman

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.

Amazon: Land of the Flooded Forest

Explore an extraordinary region where water and land life intermingle six months out of the year.

Wildcat

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.

Metamorphosis

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.

Reconnect: The Movie

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.

Piripkura

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.

Burden of Dreams

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.

Teatro Amazonas: The Art of Sound and Nature

The history of the Teatro Amazonas in Manaus, an opera house located in the middle of the Amazon rainforest, whose construction, between 1884 and 1896, depended on the labor exploitation of the local indigenous populations, provides an insight into the cultural, social and political situation in Brazil.

Tears in the Amazon

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.

Sachamama

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

Manifesting the Mind: Footprints of the Shaman

In these interviews, Dennis McKenna, Alex Grey, Rick Strassman, and other champions of psychedelics share their views on the value of psychedelic medicine, and its neglect in Western society.

Itapoa - Un proyecto que camina

Aya: Awakenings

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.