Círculos

The Man Who Drank the Universe

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.

La medicina del perdón

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.

Esas voces que curan

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?

Ayahuasca Diary

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

A Farra do Circo

This documentary highlights the evolution of Brazil's Circo Voador venue from homespun artists' performance space to national cultural institution.

O Rap Pelo Rap

To do this documentary, the director Pedro Henrique Fávero featured 42 characters - among MCs, DJs and producers - to make a detailed map of its kind in the country. Without mincing words, they speak openly here about 8 topics proposed by the film and try to understand Hip Hop in Brazil. The result is a collection of stories from a lot of fighting, where there are many eternal start-end-start, overcoming the difficulties of being understood and feeling of belonging to a group and many clichés.

Where Are You, João Gilberto?

Where are you, João Gilberto? sets out in the footsteps of German writer Marc Fischer who obsessively searched for the legendary founding father of Bossa Nova and last great musical legend of our time, Brazilian musician João Gilberto, who has not been seen in public for decades. Fischer described his journey in a book, Hobalala, but committed suicide one week before it was published. By taking up Marc Fischer's quest, following his steps one by one, thanks to all the clues he left us, we pursue João Gilberto to understand the history, the very soul and essence of Bossa Nova. But who can tell whether we will meet him or not?

Maria Bethânia: Música é Perfume

Brazilian singer Maria Bethania has a 40-year singing career. A documentary shows her concerts and famous family.

Forêts

In a dark, ambiguous environment, minuscule particles drift slowly before the lens. The image focuses to reveal spruce trees and tall pines, while Innu voices tell us the story of this territory, this flooded forest. Muffled percussive sounds gradually become louder, suggesting the presence of a hydroelectric dam. The submerged trees gradually transform into firebrands as whispers bring back the stories of this forest.

Cry Rock

The wild beauty of the Bella Coola Valley blends with vivid watercolor animation illuminating the role of the Nuxalk oral tradition and the intersection of story, place and culture.

Você Também Pode Dar um Presunto Legal

Amid the civil-military dictatorship implanted with the 1964 coup, Sergio Muniz had the idea of making a documentary about the action of the Death Squad. At the time, the press still had some freedom to disseminate the work of these death squads formed by police officers of various ranks, and that he acted on the outskirts of cities like Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. The victims of police repression (as today) were men, poor and black, and this condition is supposed criminals.

KAPU: Sacred Hawaiian Burials

Death is an intimate experience, and how we lay our loved ones to rest, varies between cultures. KAPU: Sacred Hawaiian Burials sheds light on the ongoing battle by Native Hawaiians to protect burial sites across the state and the iwi, or sacred bones, that are within them.

The Road Forward

The Road Forward is an electrifying musical documentary that connects a pivotal moment in Canada’s civil rights history—the beginnings of Indian Nationalism in the 1930s—with the powerful momentum of First Nations activism today. Interviews and musical sequences describe how a tiny movement, the Native Brotherhood and Sisterhood, grew to become a successful voice for change across the country. Visually stunning, The Road Forward seamlessly connects past and present through superbly produced story-songs with soaring vocals, blues, rock, and traditional beats.

The Shaman & Ayahuasca: Journeys to Sacred Realms

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.

Pacífico

What starts as a desire to experience nature more intimately develops into a relatable conversation on alternative pathways through life. Two friends go on a two-year road trip through Latin America. Presenting an insight into long term travel and how engaging in new cultures and environments can help widen our perspective and deepen our understanding of the world we live in. Pacifico forms a discussion around the pros and cons of living in the moment; Showing how slowing down and observing the world mindfully can aid in gaining perspective and broaden an understanding of what is important in life.

Now Is the Time

When internationally renowned Haida carver Robert Davidson was only 22 years old, he carved the first new totem pole on British Columbia’s Haida Gwaii in almost a century. On the 50th anniversary of the pole’s raising, Haida filmmaker Christopher Auchter steps easily through history to revisit that day in August 1969, when the entire village of Old Massett gathered to celebrate the event that would signal the rebirth of the Haida spirit.

The Song That Calls You Home

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.

Triste Trópico

In this "fake documentary", a doctor returns to Brazil after his studies in Paris. Setting out to practice Medicine, he becomes an indigenous messiah and, in time, a cannibal.

Ayahuasca: Einer uralten Medizin auf der Spur