The Amazon Head Hunters(1932)

Grazing the Amazon(pt)

There are 85 million cows in the Brazilian Amazon, which means three cows for each human dweller grazing today and area that was once forest. Less than fifty years ago, in the 1970s, the rainforest was intact. Since then, a portion the size of France has disappeared, 66% of which transformed into pastures. Much of this change is a consequence of government incentives that attracted thousands of farmers from southern lands. Cattle ranching became an economic and cultural banner of the Amazon, forging powerful politicians to defend it. In 2009, there was a game changer: the Public Prosecutor's Office sued large slaughterhouses, forcing them to supervise cattle supplying farms.

Big River Man(en)

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 White Diamond(en)

This 2004 documentary by Werner Herzog diaries the struggle of a passionate English inventor to design and test a unique airship during its maiden flight above the jungle canopy.

Lost Cities of the Amazon(en)

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.

Lords of the Forest(fr)

Documentary about the inhabitants, both human and animal, of the Belgian Congo. Released in 1958.

Nostalgia for the Lake(es)

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.

Shipibo Konibo: A Rite of Passage(en)

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.

The Story of Funk: One Nation Under a Groove(en)

A documentary on funk and P-funk and the bands and artists that made it all happen: James Brown, Sly Stone, George Clinton, Bootsy Collins, Maurice White and his Earth Wind & Fire, Average White Band, Kool & The Gang and lots more. It tells the story of black American music and how it evolved from funk to more main stream to disco to hiphop to contemporary R 'n B and its impact on society. Music and live footage from the bands, interviews with artists and band members of Kool & The Gang, Earth Wind & Fire, George Clinton and lots more.

The Medicine of Forgiveness(es)

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.

Ayahuasca Diary(en)

Four Westerners with various ailments travel to Peruvian Amazonia to drink ayahuasca, a traditional medicine renowned for its healing powers.

Amazon(en)

Explore the mysterious Amazon through the amazing IMAX experience. Amazon celebrates the beauty, vitality and wonder of the rapidly disappearing rain forest.

Ayahuasca(en)

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.

Dark Green(en)

In Dark Green we follow conservationist and storyteller Paul Rosolie deep into the jungle of the Amazon, risking his life to learn more on this last remaining wilderness on earth.

The Shaman & Ayahuasca: Journeys to Sacred Realms(en)

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.

The Last Forest(pt)

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.

The Devil's Island: Journey Into Jungle Alcatraz(en)

Imagine the prison of Alcatraz, only 10 times worse, built on tropical, hellish and deadly islands, lost to the rest of the world. Three tiny castaway islands rise away from the coast of French Guyana, in South America: The Devil's Islands. Now buried under an impenetrable jungle, lay the lost remains of what had been for a hundred years the most storied convict prison in history. There, while most of the prisoners faded into oblivion, a few became legends. Some because they were innocent, as in the scandalous Dreyfus Affair, some because they somehow escaped the islands of nightmare, as did the "butterfly", Henry Charrière, immortalized by Steve McQueen in Papillon. Now 50 years after the prison doors slammed shut for the last time, we explore what's left of the Devil's Islands' unbelievably dark and oppressive realm.

Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness(en)

Elephants disrupt the lives of a family deep in the jungles of Northern Siam, and an entire village.

Tóxico, Texaco, Tóxico(es)

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.

Amazonie, les murmures de la forêt(fr)

Burden of Dreams(en)

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.