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.
Himself
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.
2001-01-01
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A documentary about iboga, a medicinal tree root that is the basis of the bwiti religion in Gabon.
With fireworks forming the word “Rio” in the sky and supermodel Gisele Bundchen shimmering to the tune of “The Girl from Ipanema,” Rio de Janiero welcomed the world to the first Olympic Games in South America with a serious message underlying the celebration: Let’s take care of our planet.
Salvia Divinorum is an often misunderstood and powerful psychedelic plant used by the Mazatec shamans in southern Mexico for centuries. This entheogen's mysteries are thoroughly explored, by Director Erin Wyche, from an American view point.
The third and final part of a trilogy based on Arctic creation myths. The film is a multifaceted tissue weave of myths and traditions reflected in the symbiosis between reindeer, human and landscape.
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.
This Traveltalk series short brings us to Lima, Peru where we see a modern city.
Andean communities fight to protect their water from contamination by mining companies.
The Closing Ceremony of the XXXI st Olympiad.
Join a team of archaeologists and the Discovery Channel in an investigation into the mysterious lines of the Nazca region in Peru. Created by the Nazcas, these huge sculptures are only visible from the sky and depict people, animal, geometric forms, and strange creatures. See a premier exhibition of pottery and textiles, musical instruments, and mummies from this long-forgotten, pre-Columbian civilization and visit Cahuachi, a buried city of pyramids and ceremonial buildings which may have once been the religious capital of the Nazca people.
Public health physician Noel Nutels' ideas and the footage he made of Brazilian indigenous peoples between 1940 and 1970 come together to denounce the historic massacre against native communities.
A short documentary covering the conclave and election of Pope Pius XII.
Eami means ‘forest’ in Ayoreo. It also means ‘world’. The story happens in the Paraguayan Chaco, the territory with the highest deforestation rate in the world. 25,000 hectares of forest are being deforested a month in this territory which would mean an average of 841 hectares a day or 35 hectares per hour. The forest barely lives and this only due to a reserve that the Totobiegosode people achieved in a legal manner. They call Chaidi this place which means ancestral land or the place where we always lived and it is part of the "Ayoreo Totobiegosode Natural and Cultural Heritage". Before this, they had to live through the traumatic situation of leaving the territory behind and surviving a war. It is the story of the Ayoreo Totobiegosode people, told from the point of view of Asoja, a bird-god with the ability to bring an omniscient- temporal gaze, who becomes the narrator of this story developed in a crossing between documentary and fiction.
Bye Bye Barcelona is a documentary about a city and its relation to tourism , on the difficult coexistence between Barcelona the city and Barcelona the tourist destination
A luxury cruise boat motors up the Yangtze - navigating the mythic waterway known in China simply as "The River." The Yangtze is about to be transformed by the biggest hydroelectric dam in history. At the river's edge - a young woman says goodbye to her family as the floodwaters rise towards their small homestead. The Three Gorges Dam - contested symbol of the Chinese economic miracle - provides the epic backdrop for Up the Yangtze, a dramatic feature documentary on life inside modern China.
A poignant all-Indigenous English and Cree-English collaborative documentary that breaks long-held silences imposed upon indigenous children who were interned at the notoriously violent St. Anne’s Residential School in Fort Albany First Nation, Ontario. Use of a homemade electric chair at St. Anne's and the incorporation of testimony about student-on-student abuse makes this documentary stand apart from other films about Canadian residential school experiences. This film will serve as an Indigenous historical document wholly authored by Indigenous bodies and voices, those of the Survivors themselves.
This short documentary is the portrait of an 88-year-old woman who lives alone in a log cabin without running water or electricity. Augusta is a non-status Shuswap Indian living in the Williams Lake area of British Columbia. She recalls past times, but lives very much in the present. Self-sufficient, dedicated to her people, she spreads warmth wherever she moves, with her songs and her harmonica.
A multi-billion-dollar mining project is launched by the American Newmont Mining Corporation and lays claim to the land belonging to Preuvian highlander Máxima Acuña.
In 1832 the government of Van Diemen’s Land sent the last Aboriginal resistance fighters into exile at Wybalenna on Flinders Island, bringing an end to the Black War and opening a new chapter in the struggle for justice and survival by Tasmanian Aboriginal people. Black Man’s Houses tells a dramatic story of the quest by Aboriginal people to reclaim the graves of their ancestors against a background of racism and denial. Documenting a moving memorial re-enactment of the funeral of the great chief Manalargenna, the film also charts the cultural strength and resilience of his descendants as they are forced to fight for recognition in a society that is not ready to remember the terrible events of the past.
It is late 2004, and 34-year-old Englishman Alistair Appleton is about to fly from London to the Brazilian coast, where he will drink ayahuasca for the first time. With wit, insight, and sensitivity, Alistair shares this experience with us, and chats with some fellow participants before and after the ayahuasca ceremonies. For the past few years, Alistair had been working as a television presenter. In 2000, he started making trips to the Centre for World Peace and Health in Scotland to learn how to meditate. When clinical psychologist Silvia Polivoy opened an ayahuasca healing center in Bahia in 2004, Alistair faced his fears and seized the opportunity to attend.