"An exploration into the world of ayahausca and ayahausca shamanism."
This documentary examines the traditions and subjective effects of ayahuasca drinking, primarily from a Western perspective.
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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.
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.
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.
Shipibo healer Ricardo Amaringo describes how he prepares, teaches, and shares the plant medicine ayahuasca. Olivia and Julian Arévalo sing examples of icaros (healing songs) in the Shipibo language.
SHAMANS OF THE AMAZON is a personal account of filmmaker Dean Jefferys as he returns to the Amazon with his partner and one year old daughter. They journey deep into the Ecuadorian rainforest to learn about and experience the ancient ayahuasca healing ceremony. The film brings to the viewer an intimate and fascinating look at the shamans of the Amazon, and the life that is threatened by ecological destruction.
The Shipibo-Konibo people of Peruvian Amazon decorate their pottery, jewelry, textiles, and body art with complex geometric patterns called kené. These patterns also have corresponding songs, called icaros, which are integral to the Shipibo way of life. This documentary explores these unique art forms, and one Shipibo family's efforts to safeguard the tradition.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"Time is Art" is ultimately the story of an artist's search for inspiration in a money-driven society that shuns creativity, and of the human search for meaning in a seemingly meaningless world.
After years of suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, six US veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan travel to Peru on a quest for healing. With the help and guidance of three brothers who are traditional healers, they take ayahuasca and other plant medicines during a 10-day retreat in the Amazon rainforest.
The secrets about unlocking the mysteries of consciousness by plant-drugs. The related chances and risks involved in this shamanism. While filming Blueberry, the Secret Experience, Jan Kounen met the Shipibo healers of the Peruvian Amazon and discovered their sacred plant: Ayahuasca, the spirit vine. Deeply affected by this experience, he decided to return to Peru to shoot a documentary on the plant and the medicinal rites of the shamans. To this end, he filmed the natives but also met neurologists, philosophers, artists, and chemists working on this subject. He notably interviewed Jean Giraud, the illustrator of Blueberry, and Kary Mullis, winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. More than a traditional documentary, the film is an invitation to travel, a half-open door to another world or another perception of reality. The secrets about unlocking the mysteries of consciousness by plant-drugs. The related chances and risks involved in this shamanism.
On a quest for emotional healing and spiritual awakening, a naturopathic doctor and an accountant join others in the Peruvian Amazon to drink a psychedelic brew called ayahuasca.
In the late 1970s, Marcel fled Catalonia to avoid conscription into the Spanish military. For 30 years he has been living in the tropical forests of Costa Rica, where he hosts ayahuasca ceremonies for young seekers from the West.
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.
Plant Explorer Richard Evans Schultes was a real life Indiana Jones whose discoveries of hallucinogenic plants laid the foundation for the psychedelic sixties. Now in this two hour History Channel TV Special, his former student Wade Davis, follows in his footsteps to experience the discoveries that Schultes brought to the western world. Shot around the planet, from Canada to the Amazon, we experience rarely seen native hallucinogenic ceremonies and find out the true events leading up to the Psychedelic Sixties. Featuring author/adventurer Wade Davis ("Serpent and the Rainbow"), Dr. Andrew Weil, the Grateful Dead's Bob Weir and many others, this program tells the story of the discovery of peyote, magic mushrooms and beyond: one man's little known quest to classify the Plants of the Gods. Richard Evans Schultes revolutionized science and spawned another revolution he never imagined.
An encounter with the last shamans of Bolivia's Beni River Valley brings the audience on an intimate spiritual journey through the Amazon Rainforest. Navigating the viewer through lush landscapes on a ritual of transcendence and forgiveness, this experimental documentary recreates for audiences the experience of the potent and sacred Ayahuasca Vine.
Anthropologist and filmmaker João Meirinhos travels in Peruvian Amazonia to speak with healers who work with the plant medicine ayahuasca. The journey begins on the outskirts of Puerto Maldonado in southeastern Peru, and winds northward to Pucallpa and Iquitos.
THE SPIRIT MOLECULE weaves an account of Dr. Rick Strassman's groundbreaking DMT research through a multifaceted approach to this intriguing hallucinogen found in the human brain and hundreds of plants, including the sacred Amazonian brew, ayahuasca. Utilizing interviews with a variety of experts to explain their thoughts and experiences with DMT, and ayahuasca, within their respective fields, and discussions with Strassman’s research volunteers, brings to life the awesome effects of this compound, and introduces us to far-reaching theories regarding its role in human consciousness.
This revealing documentary honors the legendary Sidney Poitier—iconic actor, filmmaker, and civil rights activist. Featuring interviews with Denzel Washington, Spike Lee, Halle Berry, and more.
Join the likes of Jeremy Renner, Hailee Steinfeld, Florence Pugh, and Vincent D’Onofrio as they reveal how Marvel Studios’ “Hawkeye” was conceived and created. Witness firsthand what it took to pull off the show’s pulse-pounding action set pieces, and discover how iconic characters from the pages of Marvel Comics such as Kate Bishop were adapted and brought to life for the six-episode series.
In 1999, Internet entrepreneur Josh Harris recruits dozens of young men and women who agree to live in underground apartments for weeks at a time while their every movement is broadcast online. Soon, Harris and his girlfriend embark on their own subterranean adventure, with cameras streaming live footage of their meals, arguments, bedroom activities, and bathroom habits. This documentary explores the role of technology in our lives, as it charts the fragile nature of dot-com economy.
Unravel the case of Utah therapist Jodi Hildebrandt, whose child abuse arrest with parenting YouTuber Ruby Franke exposed a twisted tale of manipulation.
A visual montage portrait of our contemporary world dominated by globalized technology and violence.
SEDUCED AND ABANDONED combines acting legend Alec Baldwin with director James Toback as they lead us on a troublesome and often hilarious journey of raising financing for their next feature film. Moving from director to financier to star actor, the two players provide us with a unique look behind the curtain at the world's biggest and most glamourous film festival, shining a light on the bitter-sweet relationship filmmakers have with Cannes and the film business. Featuring insights from directors Martin Scorsese, 'Bernando Bertolucci' and Roman Polanski; actors Ryan Gosling and Jessica Chastain and a host of film distribution luminaries.
In this documentary, recovering addict and amputee John Wood finds himself in a stranger-than-fiction battle to reclaim his mummified leg from Southern entrepreneur Shannon Whisnant, who found it in a grill he bought at an auction and believes it therefore to be his rightful property.
A detailing of the rise to prominence and global sporting superstardom of six supremely talented young Manchester United football players (David Beckham, Nicky Butt, Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes, Phil and Gary Neville). The film covers the period 1992-1999, culminating in Manchester United's European Cup triumph.
Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, and Al Pacino in conversation about The Irishman.
A documentary about the making of David Fincher's 2008 film THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON. Virtually every element in the evolution of the Fincher's film is documented here, from the project's attachment to numerous other directors during the 1990s, to its shoot in 2006 and 2007 in New Orleans, to its complex, CGI-intensive postproduction process.
A documentary about the sport of boxing, as seen through the eyes of champions Mike Tyson, Evander Holyfield and Bernard Hopkins.
Through deeply personal interviews with her siblings and an examination of the photographs, letters, and belongings left behind, Mariska assembles a new portrait of her mother Jayne Mansfield, an extraordinary and complex woman.
A documentary that explores the downloading revolution; the kids that created it, the bands and the businesses that were affected by it, and its impact on the world at large.
Interviews with leading authors, philosophers and scientists, with an in-depth discussion of the Law of Attraction. The audience is shown how they can learn and use 'The Secret' in their everyday lives.
Filmmakers discuss the legacy of Alfred Hitchcock and the book “Hitchcock/Truffaut” (“Le cinéma selon Hitchcock”), written by François Truffaut and published in 1966.
From the heights of her modeling fame to her tragic death, this documentary reveals Anna Nicole Smith through the eyes of the people closest to her.
Documentary of the making of the sequel to the popular Schwarzenegger film, The Terminator.
Stars of "The Walking Dead," Andrew Lincoln and Danai Gurira, walk down memory lane and visit iconic locations where pivotal moments between their characters, Rick and Michonne, were filmed.
The Making-of James Cameron's Avatar. It shows interesting parts of the work on the set.